Trig Point OSBM S 5140
A Philosophical Marker in a Nuclear Landscape
How can practice-led research through its process and form make visible the contradictions of a wild, bucolic landscape punctuated by the weapons of mass destruction of a military industrial complex? What is the best ‘voice’ through which to reflect the complex paradox of questions raised around this heavily coded landscape?
Sinclair aims to interrogate the veracity and agency of an art practice set against such a coded landscape, test-bedding the most empathetic formal manifestation where method and form, for example, photographic evidence, may alone, be too fixed or formalised in relating to reading this particular landscape. Over a full Calendar year, Sinclair repeatedly walked a 10km route along the spine of the Rosneath Peninsula in close proximity to the Nuclear Submarine Bases at Coulport and Faslane, on the Firth of Clyde – Gare Loch/Loch Long. This investigation was undertaken in all seasons and in all weather, with Sinclair observing and documenting the changes in light, weather flora and fauna at the destination of the walk: Trig Point OSBM S5140. The exhibition output is constructed as a Mise en Scene around the formal device of a “Picnic Blanket for a Nuclear/Philosophical Landscape” that will lie on the floor of the gallery approx. 3m x 2.2m and will form the backdrop for a first manifestation of this research., detailing this pathological pilgrimage. The works are further informed by Sinclair walking and listening to a series of audio books charting the history of Philosophy, from the Pre-Socratics in the first century BCE walking toward the 21st Century, the landscape itself becomes a dark mirror to the end game of this rarefied philosophical discussion of Epistemology and Ontology – this knowledge and beingtroubles our thoughts, as the cognitive dissonance of this sublime landscape with its invisible underground stores of Armageddon fails to resolve into focus.
Sinclair sees this new work as a manifestation of discussions around coded landscape themes undertaken as part of ‘Reading Landscape’ Research Group’s enquiries. The exhibition will offer an opportunity to further develop this research through public dissemination and engagement.

'Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories & Transformation' comprises an Exhibition of practice-led research (to be complemented by a Symposium) held at the Lighthouse, Glasgow (25 Jan-22 March 2020). Embedded within the exhibition is research-led practice integral to diverse projects – individual and collaborative – that the 16 member of GSA’s Reading Landscape research group have been undertaking since the Group’s inception in 2014. The exhibition utilised the gallery as a dynamic space where reflexive curatorial, creative and theoretical practices relating to current debates in landscape research were investigated by the artists and explored with a wider public over the exhibition period, creating an important framework for new practice-led and applied research to be disseminated to diverse audiences.