Caitlin Kiely

Caitlin's practice has become increasingly concerned with the landscape and how it is a site for narratives to be contained, unearthed and situated. Her research methods borrow from other fields as she approaches place by observing its landform, reading into its surface and drawing out from it. She reconsiders the traditions of site specificity as the material she 'gathers' exists primarily as words as she contemplates the landscape around her, rather than 'taking' in terms of footage or field recordings.Through personifying the landscape, Caitlin aims to bring it closer to our human presence and consciousness.

As a result of an ongoing body of research this year, Caitlin has created a narrative script called the 'The Walker in the Landscape' which has derived from her exploration and reading of many landscapes. Her writerly and poetic response to place is about rethinking the position of the landscape within a conventional narrative structure. Typically it is the silent backdrop, the setting for a story to be situated. Instead, she has recast the landscape as a female figure, bringing ‘Her’ from the background and into the foreground as ‘She’ becomes the subject of the narrative. The Walker in the Landscape is a story for the landscape. Not only because it is written for ‘She, the Landscape’, but because the words can be located and read in many landscapes.