Balnakiel

Balnakiel (2009 – 11) constitutes a large body of artworks that include: a major video and sound installation; photography series; single screen video artwork; wall painting; drawing series and photo/text works, which examine the spatial effects of wider cultural and geopolitical processes on the evolution of individual and cultural memory and sense of place, and in particular, how the military use of landscape affects a civilian population. This research is embedded in both social issues and academia. Professor Martin A. Conway, cognitive neuropsychologist and one of the foremost international experts in the field of autobiographical memory was a key collaborator. The project involved extensive fieldwork with individuals and contrasting communities of people through creative participatory activities, establishing a large corpus of data in the form of photographs, memory drawings and recorded interviews. This informed interdisciplinary drawing processes developed by Illingworth and Conway, to develop new visual languages for memory informed at a neuropsychological level of understanding, that were manifested three-dimensionally in the sound and moving image installation and related works. This project has been exhibited in solo exhibitions and film screenings internationally, with total audiences exceeding 50,000. In addition there have been a series of public talks, symposia presentations and published interviews by Illingworth on the work. These include, solo exhibitions: John Hansard Gallery, Southampton 17 February - 4 April 2009, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 6 February - 1 May 2010, screening events: Whitechapel Art Gallery, in conversation with Professor Patrick Wright, 22 September 2012; Artprojx Cinema, SVA theatre and Armory Show, New York 1 March and 3 March 2011; Maas Space, Philadelphia, 29 October 2011; Sublime, Inverness, 23 September 2011, solo tour of the Highlands of Scotland in the Screen Machine, mobile cinema, September 2009, presentations at Symposia: Modern Art Oxford,19 November 2011 and Loughborough University, January 2010. Funded by the Arts Council England, via Film and Video Umbrella and an Arts Award from the Wellcome Trust.