Oliver Reed

My work explores a phenomenological engagement of walking through mountainous landscapes, exploring a physical and emotional experience through space and time.
 
Within these space your perceptions can be challenged, as your own physical position and the environmental conditions change from one minute to the next; a space that looked flat one minute, can the look deep at the next, what was once visible, can now suddenly become hidden. The higher you walk the landscape and ecosystems change, your peripheral vision, which was once filled with a range of colours, movements, soft forms and delicate textures are slowly transformed into muted colours, hard forms and textures, stillness and at first, appearing devoid of life.

Within these high mountainous locations, you become aware of your own remoteness to the familiar and every-day, a sense of being exposed too, but reliant upon, the very elements of the environment you are in, of scree slopes, tundra, snow fields and glaciers. As you traverse further into the space your hearing can become heightened, the exposed geology creates a natural amphitheatre, with the sound being amplified and reverberating around the space.

The apparent lack of colour can disorientate, depth and space can become difficult to judge, what may look flat from one angle suddenly metamorphosis’s into having shape and form. What may appear close, may take time to reach, as your proximity to features and sense of scale become augmented, developing a sense of unease and vulnerability. Your emotions, perceptions are constantly being altered and realigned.

www.oliverreed.me