| Project title: | Ghosts of the Arctic |
| Location: | Four Corners Gallery, Bethnal Green, London, UK |
| Date(s): | 3 – 6 May 2023 Friday 28 April : preview screening at the Art Station, Suffolk |
Ghosts of the Arctic
A project by the Kotzebue Kollective
Untitled image 2022. Richard Denny
About the Artist
Richard Denny is a British /Australian Citizen (b.Sunderland UK 1967). Currently residing and working in/from Tallinn, Estonia.
Building on successful earlier practices within photography and painting that had parallel international existences over the previous 30 years, the projects completed within the last two years in the post covid sphere, have moved the artist’s practice into new territory of practice led research, speculation and exploration involving film/essay and other collaged media, places, times and ideas.
Collectively, the work is authored by the anonymous Kotzebue Kollective and sometimes produced by Katka Films, each operating from their own blurred manifestos.
Educated at RMIT ( Melbourne Australia) and also earning a scholarship from Kodak to study at RIT ( New York ,USA) with a BA in Photography.(Completed in 1995. High distinction)
More recently in 2023 Denny graduated from Falmouth University (UK) under the supervision of Josie Cockram with an MA In Fine Art. ( FMP- Ghosts of the Arctic)
Commencing in October 2023, the artist will embark on a practice-led PhD at Northumbria University (Newcastle UK) in the Department of Visual and Material Cultures under the primary supervision of Dr Martyn Hudson.
Richard Denny was the first member of his family to attend a University.
About the project- Ghosts of the Arctic
An experimental speculative short film/essay that lasts for 17.11 minutes. It incorporates a collage of various film footage, audio, sound, and written elements to explore concepts of time, borders, and ideologies. The work is influenced by a residency experience in Svalbard, during the darkless summer days and nights of the High Arctic in 2022.
The film is accompanied by photographic images, objects, and documents from the abandoned Soviet coal mining town of Pyramiden in Svalbard, which contribute to an eerie atmosphere and a sense of place.
Titled ‘Ghosts of the Arctic’, the project follows the life of fictional artist Edward Knorr and the search for his missing works by the fictional art critic Albert Bernstein. The journey spans from the Baltic states to North-East England and then to the Soviet Arctic, interweaving themes of loss, love, war, and social and political turmoil in lost imagined futures and viewed in an era where memories are commodified.
The ‘short film’ explores the perspectives of both a witness and a researcher. Time, reality, truth, and fiction are fragmented and urgently presented through various characters and voices, incorporating elements of speculative fiction, autobiography, lived experiences, and the lingering presence of the past and future.
The author grapples with questions of authenticity, ownership, and control over archives and memories, assuming the roles of a forecaster, documenter, philosopher, confessionalist, and historian. More questions than answers are presented as is often the case in contemporary art.
The conceptual exploration of the project draws on essayistic documentary filmmaking, Hauntology, collage techniques, memory studies, colonialism, and psychogeography. It combines photography, film, text, sound, painting, narrative voice, and found footage to create assemblages, images, and artefacts that explore both real and imagined landscapes in a time seemingly marked by post-capitalist decline.
The outcome & dissemination
Ghosts of the Arctic was presented between 3 – 6 May 2023 at Four Corners Gallery, Bethnal Green, London, UK
The film was also previewed on 28 April 2023 at The Art station, Saxmundham, Suffolk, UK, in a screening curated by Film maker Dr Emily Richardson
All Images Untitled Richard Denny. 2022
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