Liz North — Unpublished tour

I am new to this isolated peninsula in South West Cumbria, relocating at the start of 2021 from the open moors and industrial valleys of the South Pennines to the open seascape of the Duddon Estuary and Irish Sea. I am building a new life here in Haverigg, walking to my place of work in Millom and taking my inspiration from the landscape I meander through and adjust to.

Having always been drawn to the quirky, imaginary, surreal or other worldly, I tend to notice how things are placed, relate to one another or by looking more closely can become abstract and nonsensical.

I am attracted to Nature - the textures, colours and form of the natural world and in particular the inter-relationship with human activity and the impact of Man on his surroundings. How Nature adapts and takes its rightful place when our activity ceases or finds a way to survive the challenges placed in its environment.

Manmade structures also interest me: their purpose, shapes and placement. I seek to question, comment or display them out of context. In so doing I offer humour in my images that occurs naturally by the circumstance or composition of the subject taken in abstract form, playing on natural forms, bold shapes and random experience.

By relocating during a pandemic I have experienced a series of internal and external polarities – connection and disconnection, feelings of oneness with nature and otherness in my surroundings, trapped by circumstance and freed by the land and seascapes. I too have become other worldly, an incomer, outsider, offcomer and this is reflected in my images.

I have documented the everyday using an abstract, dream-like quality, commenting on the natural and man-made objects I notice from a viewpoint that isn’t ordinary, is different and from another world.

Liz North September 2021