In Plane Sight

In Plane Sight highlights the enduring U.S. military presence at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, where the return of American nuclear weapons is imminent after a 15-year gap following the end of the Cold War.

The exhibition draws upon Cobbin’s childhood memories of growing up on a housing estate beside the airbase as well as her recent participation in anti-nuclear protests there. Her work probes the complex entanglement of land occupation, militarism, environmental degradation and the human yearning for peace. A four-minute documentary film, made by Cobbin, about the airbase and the most recent peace camp there, is included as part of this exhibition.  

Working on paper and unstretched canvas, Cobbin’s imagery is rich with incongruity: playful and intimidating, tender and harsh, even-handed and political. Her paintings contrast the innocence and beauty of nature with the stark machinery of war.

Toy-like rabbits, which recur throughout the series, act as naive guides to the foreboding fences, fearsome weaponry and full-spectrum surveillance that disrupt the rural landscape and damage its delicate ecosystems. These rabbits are profuse and fertile trespassers on their own land, as subversive as they are vulnerable.

At the centre of the exhibition looms a large, shadowy painting of a Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II aircraft, which is equipped to carry nuclear missiles. Its image is
both menacing and arresting, imposing and shady. Its presence anchors the show with a sense of scale and conveys the inevitable disquiet – literal as well as psychological – that such a powerful and destructive machine gives rise to.

Through these juxtapositions, In Plane Sight reflects on the surreal coexistence of peace and belligerence within a contested landscape. It invites the viewer to consider what gets overlooked in everyday life in an ordinary place – here it is foreign military hardware integrated into an English rural landscape – and the invisible costs borne by nature, animals and humans alike.