Caroline Munn

About The Artist

Caroline Munn exhibited in 2013 at The Cut in the group show IMPERFECT PRESENT FUTURE PERFECT

IMPERFECT PRESENT FUTURE PERFECT

‘The uncanny is something which is secretly familiar, which has undergone repression and then returned from it.’
Sigmund Freud, 1919, from his essay “The ‘Uncanny’”

My recent series ‘Uncanny Isle’ was shot over the late spring and summer of 2012 on Orford Ness, a large shingle spit off the Suffolk Coast. For most of the 20th century the Ministry of Defence owned this desolate place and much of what took place there was shrouded in secrecy.

As Robert Macfarlane describes it in his book The Wild Places. ‘All across the Ness, enigmatic military structures still protrude from the shingle – pre-fabricated barracks, listening stations, beacons, watchtowers, bunkers, explosion-chambers. Unexploded ordinance still lies around.’(Macfarlane, 2007:256)

Now owned by the National Trust these buildings are gradually crumbling away on this exposed desert like strip of land. They are becoming modern day ruins, monuments to the Cold War as nature gradually reclaims the Ness. But the reverberations of the experiments and tests that took place on Orford Ness can still be felt today – the very concrete and bricks of the place are infused with ‘the uncanny’.

Exhibitions Featuring Caroline Munn