The next day, we walked from Aldeburgh to the northern end of Orford Ness by Slaughden. Here, the distance between the North Sea shingle shore and the marsh of the River Alde is a matter of metres. We saw a bank of concrete and artificial structures that had been used to shore up the northern end of the Ness and maintain its only, and somewhat precarious, link to the mainland.
The sculptural forms of the geometric structure were striking, becoming contorted by the force and persistence of the waves. Again, I was stuck by relationship between the land, sea and the human presence on the Ness. The coastline engineering, the over-the-horizon radar masts and structure of Cobra Mist and the Lighthouse all strive to make contact, or maintain presence in relation to the sea. However, all were fallible, or now redundant.
Orford Ness is a spit of shingle precariously attached at the north end at Slaughden, near Aldeburgh. It is the largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe and best preserved in Britain largely due to control in visitor numbers by the National Trust Nature Reserve. Felicity and I discovered this when we arrived mid-week in June, not realising that the Saturday only ferry was still in operation. We would have to wait until the weekend to access the Ness. So ’til then we observed it from afar. We decided to walk along the River Alde from Orford towards Snape on the first day. We walk and talk about the changing landscape, the light and use our digital cameras and my sound recorder to create an aide-memoire of the walk.
The horizon of the Ness is punctuated only by redundant man-made structures left over from a history of maritime navigation, military defence and innovation.
The buildings such as the Black Beacon, Laboratory 1, 2, 3 and Vibration Test Building (known as the ‘Pagodas’ for their architectural form) have a striking and menacing presence that catalogue experimentation in radio, radar, bomb ballistics and atomic test cells in the C20th.
The National Trust’s approach to conservation of buildings is different here to what they are renowned for in the rest of the UK. On the Ness, the buildings are largely left in the state that they were found when the Trust took over they land from the Ministry of Defence in 1993. There is little attempt to preserve the buildings from the on-going coastal erosion that is rife on this stretch of land. Gradually they are being taken back by nature. Since my visit in 2013 for East to East, one of the spindly lookout structures on the shoreline has vanished. Slowly the horizon is changing. The most endangered building is the decommissioned Lighthouse which is now owned by the Orfordness Lighthouse Trust. It stands tall and straight on the horizon but is threatened by erosion on a daily basis. It draws my gaze each time I scan the horizon, I want to see it close up.
In the meantime, we press on northward towards Cobra Mist, a menacing looking building that house the Anglo-American over the horizon radar experimental research in the 1960s and 70s. Later it became a transmitting station and was used by the UK Foreign Office and the BBC World Service until 2011.
I am fascinated by the existence of man and nature on the Ness. Each striving for survival. It is a harsh but fascinating environment that feels otherworldly.
Felicity told me about the most easterly part of Long Island: Montauk Point. I started to find out about the area and was struck by a number of commonalities with Orford Ness, an area in Suffolk that has fascinated me for a while, and that I had visited several times as part of my East to East project.
- Both lie in the counties of Suffolk in their respective countries USA and UK.
- Both are fairly remote east coast thin spits of land.
- Both lie just over 100 miles east of major cities (New York City and London respectively).
- Both have nature reserves (The Nature Conservancy and National Trust Nature Reserve) of international significant scientific and ecological interest for migrating birds, coastal vegetation, moor and marshland.
- Both are subject to coastal erosion.
- Both have lighthouses that are used as beacons for westward travelling ships (the building of Montauk Lighthouse began in 1792, the same year that Orford Ness Lighthouse was commissioned).
- Both have been used as military sites by the US Military and the UK Ministry of Defence and both specialized in long range radar research technology during the Cold War.
So we decided to develop a week-long research residency in each location. Felicity would visit me in Suffolk, UK in June. I would visit Suffolk County, USA with her at the end of July. We would record our observations of these two locations and see what potential they might hold for further projects.
I was awarded an a-n Artist Bursary 2018 that made my travel to Montauk possible. Our research project Change, Chance and Circumstance: Field Notes was about to begin.
In July 2017, I invited beach-goers on Aldeburgh beach, Suffolk, UK to lie still a while on light-sensitive cloth laid out on the shingle. The result was a series of full-scale cyanotypes, Still on the Beach. They were installed on the beach and viewed from the top of the Aldeburgh Lookout Gallery as part of Caroline Wiseman’s year-long programme Duchamp 100 Yearsin which contemporary artists made new work that celebrated Duchamp’s continuing influence on art today.
One of the participants in making the cyanotypes was Felicity Faulkner, a New York-based artist who was in Aldeburgh undertaking a residency there at Brittens-Pear Foundation.
We struck up an instant rapport: we both trained as painters and share a fascination in using experimental approaches to drawing and digital and alternative photographic techniques in relation to site-specific installation.
I told Felicity about an on-going research project that I set up in 2013 called East to East that seeks to enable students, academics and artists to examine, question and reflect on the particular contemporary landscape of the east coast.
We began a dialogue that continued by email over nine months that discussed: the eastern coastal locations in New York State, and Suffolk, UK; on-going concerns about environmental issues, in particular how political actions (and in-actions) have an impact on nature conservation. We decided to try to find a way to develop a collaborative research project linking our concerns and these two east coast locations.
