Foreword
Hannah Schlotter

When people revisit the places of their childhood, they revisit the memories of what happened there. Fragments of conversations, dreams and physical interventions with the space are awakened. If the landscape is changed what happens to these memories? Do they grow weaker? And then, what happens if the space is gone entirely?

The process of this collective work has served as a form of grieving for me, one that is not yet finished. Many of us do have a connection to the spaces we inhabited as children; I felt this acutely for the farm. For me, as for others, it was a playground and shelter. But for these artists it was their first chance to see this space so densely entrenched with other people’s histories. They were able to read it afresh, imagine it in a new way if they so wanted and open it up to re-seeing and rethinking.

The rural landscape possesses an innate ability to activate the daydreamer within us. It provides shelter for our minds and encourages us to play out our thoughts. The wind charges and exhausts our anger, muffling exasperations of sorrow; the curve of the fields affords itself to a romantic narrative and the open space encases our solitude. We began this work with an open mind and let ourselves be drawn naturally towards a subject. The literary richness of the farm provided many thematic options but what we all kept returning to was the importance of space. In conversation with the people that kept horses at the farm it was clear that it is the freedom and the openness that draws them to this place.