A Dialogue with Landscape

‘A Dialogue with Landscape’ delves into the intricate interplay between humanity and nature, revealing the rich historical narratives within specific landscapes. This exploration is realised by looking at a place where spirituality and multicultural perspectives intersect, inviting a dialogue with landscape artists. This is an interview with an artist, Victoria Ahrens. The primary focus is to listen to the landscape perspectives that Victoria interacts with in her work and expand my perspective on the landscape.

Would you mind expanding on how landscape plays a role in your artwork?

Victoria - I think, for me, the landscape is crucial because it is political, social, and cultural and defines where we inhabit. It defines how we encounter spaces and places specifically on a more personal note. I grew up in Argentina. Space is huge there. Actually, not where I was living. My flat was small, but when I was in a city, I always went up into the Andes, the mountains, or the lakes. The spaces between cities between towns, between my family, for example, we used to live on a farm in a place called General Pico. It would take days in a car, or sometimes you had to fly. So, I think the sense of distance and the landscapes of Latin America, specifically, have always informed my imagination because they were a part of me when I was growing up. It’s very different from when you're in the UK, even though I continue to work with some landscapes in the UK. Because you don't feel so much here like you are inside the landscape; it's like the landscape is around you. Whereas in Latin America, the landscape is everything. It determines how you move. It determines the view that you have. And it is all-encompassing, all of the time. It's so enormous. So, the landscape is really important to me, and it's become a space of mythology. It's become a space of storytelling. And it's a space I enjoy making my work about and in.

I'm using it sometimes as a metaphor, as well. So the landscape is about internal and external landscapes, but also the places where difficult things have sometimes happened, like the dictatorship in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay in the 1970s and 80s. They used the landscape to hide their crimes. I'm interested in how the landscape has these hidden histories inside them. When you look at it, you think it's very beautiful. It's gorgeous, but they have these hidden stories inside them that may be not so beautiful and that we have to somehow uncover like an archaeologist.

Also, originally, I went to Cambridge University. I did a degree in literature and languages, but I also did some anthropology. I did some history because you can take different parts of the courses, and then I studied anthropology and social anthropology at Goldsmiths as a master's. Those kinds of early experiences in the academic study of cultures, politics and landscapes were really important. Because when I became an artist, or when I decided that I wanted to go back and formally study art, I was always doing art, but I wanted to formally study it and do a foundation and a degree, a BA degree, and then an MA, and then a PhD. Those kinds of academic studies around understanding culture and the landscapes they inhabit became very important to how I did my research afterwards.

How do you define landscape and its connection to prints and objects?

Victoria - Yeah, I think that's interesting. I mean, what I find it's interesting is when you look at the etymology, the origin of the word in English for landscape. And how it basically means an area of land, but it means an area of the land Shapur. It's from the German and the Dutch in the Middle Ages. But really, it meant a parcel of land that was inhabited by humans. It wasn't until the Romantic period in the 17th and 18th centuries that people like Turner or constables. They had people in their landscapes, but the people were becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, and the landscape became the most important and romanticized and idealized part of the paintings. Obviously, you had Dutch landscape painting before that, which often didn't have people in it either. But my point is that I guess it wasn't until the Romantic period and the ideas of the sublime that the landscape became a protagonist in art or was allowed to really be the main character in art and have a kind of personality. If you look at Turner's landscapes in Tate Britain, you can see these landscapes are overwhelming him, right? They're like, they're coming on top of him somehow, and he's inside it. He's using his fingers and the colours in the landscape itself. So, I guess for me, the connection between print and objects is that landscapes are constructed. They're not real in that sense in art, anyway. When we talk about landscapes, they are usually not necessarily like photographic immediate evidence of what was there or what they can be because I often use photographs to start my projects. Photography is very important to my projects, in fact, as well as printmaking, but they are also constructions. I'm interested in the landscape as a construction of our experiences, encounters, and imagination. You might be inside a real landscape or a real place. But the word landscape is really taking a place and making it look a certain way.

So even in the 19th century, for the beginning of photography, Edward Muybridge, for example, and his landscape photographs are Panoramix, you know of Yosemite Park. He had people cutting down trees and taking away things to make the perfect landscape. Just because it is a photograph, we think it must be true, but he also manipulated that landscape, which happens a lot. There is a place which is a real place, and then there is a landscape, which is maybe a construction of that place through art, photography prints, objects, etc.

For me, printmaking is interesting because it allows me to use the materials of the landscape in my work. So, it allows me to collect the pigments, the colours, the rocks, and objects. It allows me to make my photo etching plates with the sunshine and the water. So the landscape is actually like my studio as well. It provides me with an experience with my body, mind, and eyes. It provides me with the tools, the sun, the wood, and pigment, that is to create something artistic from it. And to research what the meaning of that landscape is, to me and other people and history and all of these different connections. It actually gives me a lot of my outdoor studio in that sense. Obviously, I have a studio in London as well, and I have an exposure unit, and I have a printing press, and I have a photographic Exposure unit. I can do things in London as well.

I did a lot in sculpture, originally fine art sculpture, at Central Saint Martin's. And so my sculptural idea of what an object is or how things operate in space has always been there in my mind. Even today, I'm trying to make it because I have this exhibition in the south of France in November, and so I'm trying to do some work. It's tough because it is always an object, a print, and a photograph. So, it's three-dimensional, which means I need a lot of space to make it, create it, and show it. I'm interested in how the objects print. I call them image objects. You know how these image objects come out of the gallery space, as in, they're not just on the wall. Sometimes, they're on the wall, but they can come into and protrude into the gallery space. That's interesting. Because it's like you're creating another three-dimensional space. You're making work about three-dimensional space and creating another kind of reproduction differently. And it means that you are thinking about your audience and how the audience interacts with your work. You are creating that space for the audience to come in and out and look at it from different perspectives. And so that is that's interesting to me.

Can you walk me through your research process when delving into the history and qualities of a specific land?

Victoria - I often start with an idea or a story, like a narrative I have read. And I'm often thinking about the connection that story or narrative has to a place I want to visit or go to. For example, I'm doing a residency, so I'm writing a proposal to say my work is generally about landscape. What is it about that landscape? That is important to me. And I need to research it profoundly. The residency in Ireland really started. So I was thinking about my ancestry because my parents are getting older, and they're really interested in thinking about their ancestry. I knew all my life that I had a little bit of Irish DNA. The story in my family is that my great-great-grandmother came from Ireland as she went to Argentina. So when I was thinking about this residency, I was thinking, okay, of course I'm interested in the Irish coastline. I'm particularly interested in water because water can hold memory. It is a place where things often move, like migration immigration, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, but even today, when we're looking at my issues around migration. The history of Ireland is the history of immigration and migration. I was trying to connect all of these kinds of ideas about my ancestry in Ireland. What was going on in Ireland at the same time? Why did they leave? Why did they go to Argentina? And how can I make work about this? Then, I discovered by researching the landscapes around the residency that this is one of the reasons why I wanted to go to this residency. I find specific places that I'm interested in exploring.

I discovered this lake called Lough Hyne, and it was very close; it was like 20 minutes from the residency. I didn't know anything about it. Then I started to research it, and I discovered that this lake is very special because it was the site of the first marine biology kind of protected area in Europe. Why? Because the lake is half freshwater and half seawater because it connects to the sea and very special marine creatures, bacteria species of phytoplankton exist in this lake. Obviously, lots of scientists for the last 100 years have been going there and researching this lake. I became very curious about this lake and wondered how it could become part of my project. Then I discovered that the lake has a phenomenon in Southeast and South Asia. It happens sometimes in Europe and Argentina. This is bioluminescence, when certain phytoplankton produce light through the movement of water because of these Luciferians inside them, this kind of biological thing inside them that produces this light. So I was like, what does this have to do with anything? And then the connection that I made was quite metaphorical. But it made sense to me, and then I started researching all of this when I went to Ireland. The bioluminescence and the phytoplankton can only be activated by movement in water, and they exist all across the coast. So my ancestors, when they left from County Cork, which is where I was in County Cork, they left from there. We have the records. On a boat, they would have probably seen at that time of the year in May and June, and they left this bioluminescence, so is there this sense of a conversation through time through 100 - 150 years, maybe? These biological phenomena on the landscape existed at that time as well. It is a thing that has existed for millennia in the sea. The second thing is that this bioluminescence is incredibly ephemeral. You literally put your hand through the water at night. It had to be at night, so I was taking films and photographs and working with the scientists of the day. We were doing kayaking for four hours at night on this lake to see the bioluminescence. This was part of my research process, which is also working. If I can be with others or get some information from others like scientists or forensic archaeologists, they're helping me understand things. It is collaboration in terms of knowledge and information.

Then, I used some of their material to create these kinds of films and prints about the waterfall, which was close to the lake, and used that as a basis to tell a very specific story that came from the 18th century when my ancestors went to Argentina, which was about a boat. It was very typical in Ireland that people left because of the potato famine, and everybody left Ireland because they couldn't survive. There was nothing to eat. So they got on a boat and were taken to America, South America, or Canada, to different places. But my ancestors went to Argentina because they were promised land to grow potatoes.

It is interesting that the potato comes from Peru and Chile and the north of Argentina. And then, in colonialism, it was taken to Spain and then to Ireland, where Ireland became the most important crop. And then, when the potato failed in Ireland, many people returned to South America. They were like, you have knowledge about growing potatoes. Come, we will give you some land, and you can grow in the place. There is this funny circularity to my story. Because of the potato, I finished in Argentina again, even though they were from Ireland. I thought that was very interesting, but there was a story where they got a lot on a boat called the SS Dresden, and it was horrible, and loads of people died. And so this journey across the water was like torture was horrible. And when they arrived in Argentina, the land they were promised was not good, and many people didn't get any land. They were just homeless and destitute and had nothing. So, they formed a colony of Irish in the south of Argentina. So, I want to go to Argentina to find the second chapter of this story. This boat was so terrible that it was the last ever boat from Ireland to Argentina because nobody wanted to go on this journey. Even if they were dying in Ireland, they were like, We don't want to go because they treat us badly. And they went to a criminal court so that you can find newspaper articles about this boat and everything. My life great-grandparents survived the journey. And, of course, that's why they eventually became engineers and did other things and whatever.

I guess my research is often based on family stories, but it's also based on stories around science and what that might encounter with the landscape, and I use it as a way to understand these kinds of conversations with history and the landscape. Obviously, I have done a lot about Argentina and the disappearance and those landscapes in the Altiplano.

Tell me the story about your grandfather. Do you sense a distinction between the photos your grandfather and you took?

Victoria - During and after my PhD, I was very interested in my grandfather's photographs because I didn't know him. He died when I was two. Everyone always said to me he was an amazing person you would love him. He was an artist as well. But I never had any evidence of his art of what he did because he was a businessman. He worked in import and export. When I was doing my PhD, my family gave me these albums of photographs that he had made. And I had never seen them before. They were amazing. The old archival images that he took. He not only took them. My grandmother told me that he exposed them and developed them himself. I guess that became important to me as well. So then, when I was doing my PhD, I was looking at these particular landscapes that he was actually in. Initially, I was looking at architecture. And then I moved to look at the landscapes of this river. And I discovered that so many of his photographs were taken on this river. Because he was travelling up this river to go to work or to look at the farms to look at the animals because he was importing meat, he was travelling by water, that was how you did it and so on at that time, and taking photos of all of these farms. So then I decided to use his archive of images, which became my archive, to try to respond and see where these places were and what the connection was 85 years later. So I went to these places. These places were complex because they were places where the bodies of the disappeared during the dictatorship and had been hidden in the water. They were places that my grandfather had gone to, and there were places that I had gone to as a child to play with. It's very beautiful. It's like the jungle, it's gorgeous. I decided to live there every five years and go there and live there on the water in the stilted houses that were above the water, flooding, and to create my photographs as a response to his photographs and to kind of mix some of those negatives and those positives together in my photo etching plates. I thought that it was quite important to create that conversation through time with him and with those landscapes and what they mean to me. So, I guess I have used some of those images that my grandfather took in other things as well. Because he was very interested in nature, he loved gardens, he loved trees and is weird because my parents always say to me, I don't know why you love it so much. We never showed you, we never told you, but my brother and I were in love with nature and trees, and I have a botanical garden in my house here with 150 plants. I'm very interested in all of that as well. Then I did a video photo essay that I wrote about my grandfather standing in front of these trees, specifically, that Canary palm tree that had been taken to Argentina in colonial times. My grandfather was also transported to Argentina in that period. He was a huge man, and he was like a tree. So he felt a connection to these trees, these palm trees. Because these palm trees were not native to Argentina, they had been brought from somewhere else, and they were very tall. And they were very exotic, very different. So he took lots of photos of himself in front of these trees. I became very interested in one project that I was doing about the colonialism of palm trees and the immigration of palm trees. I have a lot of palm trees in my house as decoration. So, I'm always looking for the historical, social, political and cultural meaning behind these places, these objects, these spaces. I think it makes it more interesting to me and more interesting to other people when there is sort of a connection as well. If you're just going somewhere and taking images, it's great, but what are you trying to say that is interesting about it? I guess that's my last one, physically visiting and capturing a particular place.

Your work's contrast between the natural landscape and vibrant hues is striking. Could you share your approach to working with colours?

Victoria - I guess one thing I should say at this point, that I'm really sure is becoming more and more important in my work, is the connection between the landscape, the minerals and climate change and the sustainability of art practice. One of the reasons why I'm using photo etchings, for example, is because it is a non-toxic process or it is less toxic. Then, use other more historical processes, like normal etching with acid and stuff. The same goes for my photographs. I'm trying to process them with natural materials because I'm interested in the fact that we use all of these chemicals for printmaking. We use all of these chemicals for photography, but we don't know where those chemicals come from. They come from the landscape, and they come from these mines. A lot of them come from Argentina, Chile, and Peru because most of the mining areas are there. Lithium mining is huge in Argentina, Chile and Peru. Copper Mining is one of the main things that we can use for etching from Chile. I'm interested in the connection between the human and the mineral and how we have become separated from where these minerals come from. And that's why I want to use the landscape and the colours of the landscape and the pigments to put them back onto the surface of the image. So I'm taking the rock pigments, and I'm using them to colour the paint, the print or the photograph again because those colours are coming from that landscape, but they also have a deeper meaning. They are the rocks that we are using to create the chemicals to make the photographs possible or to make the printmaking possible, and we have to remember that. They become like another layer of history through my hands through the rocks that I'm putting onto the surface in our raw kind of way. And this connects me to that landscape again and reminds me of what is going on because it's quite political. Actually, my work is quite political because I'm looking at how we are exploiting the landscape. Some people say to my work, Oh, it's very haunting, or it can be quite beautiful, but actually I'm trying to make people understand that. It looks beautiful, but there are lots of political issues underneath it. You need to think about it as well. Beyond just the vibrant hues. So even those very vibrant hues that I'm using digitally when I'm projecting films onto my prints. Those vibrant hues are really looking at colours as toxic colours. They are kind of luminescent colours.

When I was doing my residency in Portugal last year, the landscapes were beautiful. They were green and blue and purple and pink, but the reason why was because they were toxic because they were the residue from the chemical processes in that area. In fact, people can't live there because it's so toxic. I guess some of those vibrant hues that I was imitating from those landscapes are actually toxic colours. When I grew up in Argentina, this used to happen a lot. We used to get fertilisers from China, or they used to make them in the landscape, and then it left this terrible toxicity. It looks amazing. When you go to those mines, they look incredible. The mountains of Argentina in the north are called the mountains of the seven colours because they have so many different colours. I grew up thinking that things were very colourful, like even the textiles in Latin America. Everything is very colourful. And then I came to Europe, and everything was very grey. So I'm using those colours from my childhood memories but also from the landscapes but also because they have this symbolic toxicity.

I remember a story when I was a child, and I was in Buenos Ires. And these fertilisers were very close to the port where we lived. And they exploded because I didn't know there was a problem. There was a toxic cloud over the city. So my friends were phoning me saying you have to get out, you have to get out. Your family has to get out; it is dangerous. And there were all these colours in the water in the greens and yellows and all these toxic colours. They looked amazing, and I remember we had to, and it was raining. So we had to walk with the water up to here through the streets because in Bordeaux ciders it gets flooded all the time. We had to get away from this place, and we had to stay with some friends. Not for a long time, but maybe for a week or something. They're less available to me here in England because these things are much more controlled. I mean, it happens there were very toxic landscapes in the UK as well and mining and everything, but it was very common in Latin America. I remember these things when I grew up in Argentina. You are living in a place where everything is happening all the time around you, good things and bad things. Whereas in Europe, everything is more calm, and if something happens one day, maybe it's a big deal. Things are happening all the time around you. You're walking in the street, and somebody falls down a hole. The electricity goes off. And you have to walk in darkness, this kind of thing. I guess this comes into my work, probably without me realising. My latest work is more vibrant colours because I'm looking at the toxicity of these minerals and the family. There are lots of people who emigrated and have unusual upbringings. But I guess because in my family we've moved a lot and we speak a lot of languages. And we've had a lot of different experiences. Those kinds of experiences have coloured my memories.

By physically visiting and capturing a particular place, we can uncover the essence of the photographic medium. What are your thoughts on this?

Victoria - Yes, we can uncover the essence of the photographic new thoughts on this. As I said before, photography is incredibly important in my work because it is the way that I encounter and capture that space. And because I'm using more historical processes sometimes, I'm not just trying to stick to the past. I'm using digital cameras. I'm using drones now. I'm using video. So I'm interested in that hybrid. The hybrid place between historical photography and very technological contemporary photography and how that can help me to tell the story or to create a work of art because I'm interested in how the past and the present overlap. It makes sense to use technologies which also overlap the past and the present. I think photography is the essence of the place for sure. And depending on how you do it, you would do it in many ways. But let's not forget that the landscape anyway, even though you're taking photographs, you are deciding what is inside that image and what is outside that image, so you're still constructing that view. I enjoyed constructing the view.

Photography is drawing with light. So, it is just that you are using a screen, you're using an apparatus, a machine if you'd like to help you construct it. Whereas I guess in drawing you are using your hand as the process. But it's not that different because I'm using photography, and then I'm translating the photograph using my hands. I'm developing it in the water. I'm exposing it in the landscape. So, it’s not that different. It's just that I'm using light and my hand to make the issue. I think there's collusion between all these types of art. It's just that I'm choosing to use photography because I enjoy that medium. I enjoy the fact that I can manipulate the space and the light and my hands to create something. But I still do draw sometimes, you know, use drawing. But I guess you can argue that some people say I'm painting, and some people say I'm drawing because I'm using the rock to draw. Maybe mark the surface of life in a way that is a kind of drawing or a kind of painting with a rock.