The Ghost Wood and The RainForest

The photographs I make and exhibit (or show to people) tend to focus on themes relating to inequality and power differentials in society. Most are abstract and deal with issues conceptually.

Over the last few years I have made bodies of work commenting on, for example, Black Lives Matter, Government & Covid, and the MeToo movement. None of these are well known, or have achieved attention beyond the immediate local, but I believed strongly in them and had a need to make.

As an older white male, of European descent, I am conscious of making my work from a position of privilege and have striven to educate myself in the role of an Ally and use the spaces I have privileged access to in order to have ‘awkward’ conversations.

This alone, will not change the world, but if I can normalise such conversations in the lives of the people I come into contact with, then I feel I am more a part of the solution and less a part of the problem. Although by the very nature of unconscious bias, and the power of socialisation, I do recognise I will always be part of the problem in some way.

But over the last two or three years my analogue practice, in particular, has become focussed on small, intimate landscapes made in local woodlands – mostly about trees.

I began to realise that I was turning away from the world – as it is indeed quite a horrible place, filled with malice, intent to hurt, anger, hatred and bigotry. I seem to have had enough, so have gone to look at trees…

But here the act of avoidance becomes a statement.

So, I have started a journey of discovery where my landscapes of avoidance are the thematic core of my next body of work.

But (again) I wish to avoid the anchoring of my narrative which has been embedded in the titles of previous work: The Hurt of Flowers; A Tissue of Lies; White Gaze; The Curator’s Hand; and Civic Duty.

Instead I have decided to embark on a reflection on the issue of avoidance.

I recently watched an episode of the farming and rural life BBC Scotland programme ‘Landward’, and was intrigued by the interview with Kieran Leigh-Moy of Future Woodlands on the evocatively titled ‘Ghost Woods’. These are ancient woodlands, often isolated patches of trees on remote hillsides with less than 20% canopy cover, which are failing to thrive due to overgrazing of the land by the ever growing deer population. I have also, in the past, visited the Rainforests – Atlantic Oak Woods on the west coast of Scotland, which are also woodlands at risk.

I was captivated by the naming of these woodlands and felt that my work could focus on them as a way of tackling avoidance and of making something of this process of turning away that was tangible, demonstrative, and may contribute to the debate on conservation and the need for biodiversity – but as a lay person, someone simply responding to place.

I applied for a an exhibition slot at WASPS South Block in Glasgow for October 2025 – which would give me time to research and to make new work.

Thus the project – The Ghost Wood & The Rainforest was born.