In Plane Sight

In Plane Sight is a series of paintings that explore the enduring U.S. military presence at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England. Through the eyes of animals – mute observers of human belligerence – the works reflect on themes of land occupation, militarism, environmental degradation and the human yearning for peace.

In Bearing Witness we see a quietly damning tableau: innocent animals – a pair of rabbits – trespassing on their own land around US missiles, fenced in behind barbed wire and overshadowed by a black plane. The muted purples and greens set a dream-like mood with a sense of foreboding, casting the idyllic Suffolk countryside as an unwilling stage for a theatre of imperial war games.

In Observer, a lone cat sits beneath a sherbet-pink sky as two dark silhouettes of fighter jets roar overhead, their exhaust trails burning into the soft hues of an otherwise tranquil scene. The cat, vibrantly pink yet perfectly still, stares beyond the tangled barbed wire and into a militarised landscape of abstracted forms.

The presence of these mute animal witnesses has a very particular impact – they neither understand nor resist their circumstances, but their gaze implicates us. They are not just observers – they are sentinels, here to alert us to the dangers we face.

In Plane Sight highlights the incongruity of foreign nuclear weaponry situated in a quiet English rural landscape under the guise of ‘defence’. It’s a haunting reminder that while politicians forge alliances and pursue agendas in Whitehall and Washington, it is the innocent inhabitants of land elsewhere that bear the burden. Through a disarmingly tender lens, the series calls viewers to look directly at what we might otherwise choose to ignore.

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