Islands and Contemporary Art
Gill Perry
Published October 1st 2024 by Reaktion Books
A ground-breaking exploration of islands’ pivotal role in contemporary visual arts.
In this groundbreaking book, Gill Perry looks at the vital role that islands play in contemporary visual arts. She shows that in response to urgent issues such as the climate emergency, migration and colonial and gendered histories, artists have created compelling and provocative works that resonate across continents and colonial archipelagos.
Perry navigates landscapes of the British Isles, Ireland, the Caribbean, Pacific Oceania, the Atlantic Ocean and the Galápagos, drawing on desert island myths and insights from Island Studies. From the 1970s to the present, she illuminates imaginative strategies of representation and metaphor in installation, multi-media and film projects by renowned artists including Robert Smithson, Lisa Reihana, Roni Horn, Rodney Graham, Tacita Dean, Karen McLean, Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon, Isaac Julien, Alex Hartley and Cornelia Parker. Taking into account diverse perspectives, she offers us a profound journey through artistic explorations of the island theme.
pgs 260-262
In 2022 the British artist Mike Perry (b 1960) used a large format Phase One digital camera to photograph a seemingly anachronistic uninhabited island he had encountered while travelling around the Scottish Highlands. His large-scale Island offers a misty view of a strangely verdant, overgrown landmass amidst a bleaker, depleted Highland landscape in the Flows at Strath Halladale, a vivid counter to Epstein’s oil platform. While the surrounding land has been over-grazed by vast deer estates managed for hunting, Perry’s small island is out of reach for both deer and their predators. He has voiced concerns that ‘Britain is one of the most depleted biodiverse nations in the world.’ His eery, muted light envelops an almost mystical biodiverse Scottish island, perceived as a symbol of hope for the rewilding movement. With sardonic pessimism, he has suggested the work might also be ‘an illustration of the inevitable power of nature to reclaim the planet once we’ve destroyed ourselves’.
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