JETTISON

Jettison was awarded the Birgit Skiold Memorial Trust Award of Excellence by the Victoria & Albert Museum at the London Art Book Fair 2013.

A series of prints, multiples and artists books investigating the crash site of a RAF Tornado F3 crash near Torness Nuclear Power Station, 25 miles SE of Edinburgh on the 18th of November 1999.

‘Almost as crash investigator, I study the flotsam and jetsam of this particular coastline near Dunbar. Were these curiously sculpted chunks of rubber and high tech metal with their insect like sheens and cell like honey-combed forms, once a fighter jet or only a gale torn caravan from nearby Pease Bay? Are these twisted aluminium shards the fragments of a once lethal aircraft or residential home? Now riddled with barnacles and wave and pebble scratched striations, I contemplate the original craft’s potential to jettison its lethal weaponry in battle conflict - in this instance jettisoning its human cargo, ejected to safety, the pilot’s last minute efforts steering the plane out to sea over Torness, averting a disaster of near catastrophic, apocalyptic consequences’.

And in this current climate of environmental crisis and global military conflict, how can the artist effectively and ethically express themselves?

Sourced from the media and eye witness accounts, ‘Jettison 1: flotsam’, is a flight Crash Investigation facsimile, detailing the site of the crash, the flight paths, both proposed and actual of the plane and the ejector seats, the shoreline detritus and its possible positioning within the original plane. ‘Jettison 2: jetsom’ hypothetically plots the final flight path of pilot and plane in flip book form, detailing the rotation of the ejector seat and the planes final descent. ‘Jettison 3: shard’ presents a facsimile fragment of the wreckage packaged as a boxed multiple; whilst ‘Jettison 4: kit’, a double sided, hand lithoed print; records wreckage fragments in model ‘Airfix kit’ form. This invites the viewer as participant in the crash investigation, to assemble the numbered pieces, following the numberless instructions to their own particular constructions and conclusions.

'Jettison 4: kit' was created for the exhibition Interactions at Edinburgh Printmakers, part of a commissioned folio of prints from invited Edinburgh artists.

 

Jettison was presented at the YOU ARE HERE Symposium Talk by DF Visual Research Centre, DCA, Dundee