Cameron Williamson is an artist working with text, image and video based in the UK and Switzerland. Recently he has been working with the role of the individual in an alpine landscape, enquiring after notions of a body shedding space through ritualistic visual practices. His work focuses on the objects, images and physical actions that function as archetypal symbols ingrained into the understanding of a particular landscape. This forms an ongoing critical interest in the human figure as a body reliant on orientation and recognition.
In ‘A Mask is not a Mountain’ the human figure is positioned as a body reliant on visual orientation within a landscape. It is by actively pressing up against this mountainous body that these procedures can take on a sharper definition, serving as an example for the drive for recognition with a subject, that highlights the processes of power that pervade the photographic. With the use of play and ritual as rote gestures to address this, an attempt is made to forcibly participate in the creation of an orientation with a mountain rendered as a photographic object. This recognition is sought and revealed visually, both through the video documentation of performances and photographs of marks made onto the alpine landscape. Thereby the work aims to both bring into question and contribute to the archetypal images that make up the actions and historical symbols ingrained into the understanding of this Swiss narrative of landscape.
