19/20.HH.1-12.2011
Horizon Hankies is based on a text from Gennaro Postiglione's The Atlantic Wall: Bunker and/as Modern Architecture:
'Bunkers are based on the privilege of a horizontal rather than a vertical vision; windows, as Le Corbusier wrote (Le Corbusier, 1923), will no more be vertical, but horizontal. They follow a new view of the world imposed by the cinema, an aspect which appears to be dictated more by a cultural factor than by a true technical need; and in bunkers this horizontal cut perfectly corresponds to the observer’s eye movement through the sights of an automatic weapon while observing the horizon (Belpoliti, 2006).'
Based on Postiglione's text, Tarbuck has taken the narrative and re-presented it in visual terms. Her interpretations, specific to the bunkers in Jersey, weave an inter-relationship, abstractly visualising the links and histories that Postiglione describes.
Horizon Hankies is part of Grey Area, a new work created by Sophie Tarbuck and commissioned especially for The Jersey Arts Centre. Whilst researching the impact of the Modern Movement in Jersey, Tarbuck discovered the bunkers and buildings left behind after the Second World War. Known as part of the Atlantic Wall built by Nazi Germany, these fortifications ran the entire western coast of Europe, from the south west of France all the way to the north of Norway.
Tarbuck was drawn to the bunkers in terms of their history but also as architectural monuments that celebrate Modern Movement architecture. This conflict of interests is reflected in the title Grey Area which suggests the middle ground, of something existing between two extremes and having mixed characteristics of both. It also corresponds to the literal ‘grey area’ that emerged as concrete fortifications between central Europe and Britain.
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Copyright © Sophie Tarbuck.