Silent Spring

Landscape has always represented more than the land itself. Its representation across cultures and millennia has communicated meaning, significance, value and role within those cultures. The triptych Silent Spring, constructed landscapes made from the by-products of coal power stations, pictures a possible future, a future devoid of nature, the outcome of the continued controlling, domination and exploitation of nature, where landscape and nature are perceived as a human resource. It is named after the title of the book by visionary American biologist Rachel Carson, who warns ‘Man is part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself’.