Broken Ground

‘Broken Ground’ is a solo exhibition by Dana Ariel, the winner of the 2013 annual neo:graduates competition. The exhibition, exploring the theme of mark making and memory, was open to the public between 6th November 2014 and 4th January 2015.

‘Broken Ground’ appears on a map as a location of a crash site. With the use of photography, video and printmaking Ariel records a search for traces in the landscape as a confrontation between sight and knowledge. Mark making appears in the works as both a method of recording events and as an active action of printmaking.
Of the site, Broken Ground Dana says: ‘A circular search begins here with a photograph, a print and local historical events. What remains? What stands between what I know and what I see are notions reflected through the printing process, as experiences are translated into prints. Loss and repetition are the consequences of the making process and the re-telling of events’.

The exhibition brings together works from different sites, a crash site in the UK, a quarry in Estonia, a lookout in Israel, and others. They all share a traumatic past that reveals itself in the landscape. A scar, a stain and an impression are subjects Ariel captures in print, while repeatedly questioning the single narrative and the roll of the witness, the one who sees.