Bren Unwin

Penwith Explorer
16mm film (5 mins, looped)

Bren Unwin works in many types of media but it was not until she started researching ways in which we experience a landscape as part of her PhD entitled Phenomenology and Landscape Experience: A critical appraisal for Contemporary Art Practice, that she began to use moving imagery.

Unwin believes that paintings, such as Thomas Hart’s St Just United Mines and Stanhope Forbes On Paul Hill, by their very medium can rarely convey the idea of movement. For Unwin this is a critical element in the relationship between a viewer and the dynamic and changing environment.

Research into representational landscape painting shows that it is dominated by what is seen. However, an approach that rests on how we perceive a landscape with our whole body reveals a more embodied experience. The use of technology provides the audience with an alternative experience of a landscape and how we look at art.

Both the making and viewing practices within Penwith Explorer articulate the relationship between an active perceiver and their dynamic surroundings.