In Flight
2016
Both birds and humans have migrated for millennia, whether seeking more abundant food, or more favourable climates. Some of these journeys are regular and temporary, others more permanent, some are voluntary while others are a desperate flight from danger or starvation.
Currently Europe is seeing a huge influx of migrants and –stoked by the vitriol of a malicious press and an ugly political mood – it’s becoming alarmingly commonplace to consider our fellow human beings as pests, no matter how urgent their need for shelter and security. Our individual and collective capacity to help them remains largely unfulfilled. Hundreds of thousands of people play happily on the northern shores of the Mediterranean sea, while beyond the horizon, in the same waters, families are drowning in doomed attempts to reach Europe.
The stark reality of climate change predictions (irrespective of whether it’s a natural cycle or mans interference at the root cause) with rising sea levels and violent weather events suggest that mass human migrations will be necessary in the coming decades, something no-one will be immune to.
In Flight explores the disconnect between our current collective attitude to migrants and refugees, our unwillingness as individuals to take any meaningful action regarding our levels of consumption, using up the earths natural resources at an alarming rate and climate change and presents a bleak vision of the future.
The first phase of In Flight was an installation in an unused "Close" in Dumfries, which the first few images depict. The later photographs are taken on the shores of the Mediterranean - both a playground and a graveyard.
Dumfries Installation 2016
Read MoreBoth birds and humans have migrated for millennia, whether seeking more abundant food, or more favourable climates. Some of these journeys are regular and temporary, others more permanent, some are voluntary while others are a desperate flight from danger or starvation.
Currently Europe is seeing a huge influx of migrants and –stoked by the vitriol of a malicious press and an ugly political mood – it’s becoming alarmingly commonplace to consider our fellow human beings as pests, no matter how urgent their need for shelter and security. Our individual and collective capacity to help them remains largely unfulfilled. Hundreds of thousands of people play happily on the northern shores of the Mediterranean sea, while beyond the horizon, in the same waters, families are drowning in doomed attempts to reach Europe.
The stark reality of climate change predictions (irrespective of whether it’s a natural cycle or mans interference at the root cause) with rising sea levels and violent weather events suggest that mass human migrations will be necessary in the coming decades, something no-one will be immune to.
In Flight explores the disconnect between our current collective attitude to migrants and refugees, our unwillingness as individuals to take any meaningful action regarding our levels of consumption, using up the earths natural resources at an alarming rate and climate change and presents a bleak vision of the future.
The first phase of In Flight was an installation in an unused "Close" in Dumfries, which the first few images depict. The later photographs are taken on the shores of the Mediterranean - both a playground and a graveyard.
Dumfries Installation 2016
