Cumulus is a gallery installation in four parts, formed around 'maps' of England derived from the following sources: a WWII airman's description of the English coastline; satellite images of storms over Britain and Europe; a television weather report; government population statistics for urban areas.
The aerial gaze is referenced in all parts of the work, linking the apparently benign activities of statistical mapping and weather-obsession with ideas of targeting. Cumulus springs in part from the realisation that similar methods are used to frame both military and marketing targets, and that technologies of surveillance, satellite imaging and data-processing hugely increase the efficiency of these processes. Today the hand and eye of individual human operatives is required less and less at the point of forming the overview, suggesting a potential for alienation in the creation of ever more detailed portraits of communities and continents. Some these themes have particular resonance when seeking to define, or break down, notions of Englishness.
Cumulus uses colour video projections, digitally processed satellite photography, and looping black and white video sequences across an array of modified CCTV monitors. Along with references to early imaging apparatus, a variety of materials are employed ('perspex', formica, black vinyl cables, concrete), suggestive of the post-war industrial processes which first began to redefine the domestic environment in relation to technologies of mass consumption.
Lens:
The lens of an RAF aerial reconnaissance camera protrudes from a wall, illuminated
from within. Looking into the lens through a yellow haze filter the viewer can
read a statement from an airman returning to England after a bombing mission
over continental Europe:
"Over England there was a strange scene that I have noticed before.
The cloud formation exactly compared with the land below. Every bay and inlet
was repeated in the strata-cumulus thousands of feet above, like a white canopy
over the island."
from Fortress Raider in We Speak from the Air - Broadcasts by
the RAF, HMSO 1942
Cloud:
A digital composite satellite image for large-scale print or projection,
extending the airman's description towards absurdity, presenting a bizarre cloud
mass shaped to the political boundaries of England (absenting Scotland, Wales
and Ireland) rather than to the physical limits of the land mass.
Your Weather:
A scuzzy, digitally processed video sequence follows the choreographed manual
gestures of a UK television weather presenter. The hands make repeated journeys
out across the map, always returning with an exaggerated click to a phallic
handset, suggesting a glamorised, controlling matriarch.
City Lights:
Over a wide floor area a series of fourteen units map out the major conurbations of England. Each unit consists of a black and white CCTV monitor upended on a cast-concrete base, surmounted by a disc of transparent yellow perspex (an echo of the yellow haze filter on the aerial camera lens, in the distance at right). The different heights of these 'filter' discs are derived from UK government population statistics. The screens bear anthropomorphic markers consisting of a surreal pair of disembodied, crossed arms rotating constantly; images which unpredictably collapse with a squeak into a concentrated dot of light.
Funding & exhibition details:
Commissioned by BAC London (Battersea Arts Centre)
as part of the solo project Cloud Cover 1999Cloud Cover included the following elements:
Two installations at BAC: Cumulus and Town Hall (18 September - 29 October 1999)
and a website
Cloud Cover was funded by the Arts Council of England
Thanks to Frances Hegarty, Julie Westerman, Lesley Sanderson, Neil Conroy, John Coen, Mark Purcell, Kiaran Saunders, Chris Mann, Louise Tebbs, Jane Porter, The University of Dundee, and the staff at BAC