Simon Hitchens: CLOSE Gallery Presents Simon Hitchens

For three weeks spanning the autumn equinox of 2019 Hitchens travelled the full height of the British Isles, from latitude 50 in Cornwall to latitude 60 in Shetland. The purpose of the journey was to find rocks from eleven different geological time periods, and an additional lump of discarded plastic from a twelfth geological time period, and to make a durational day drawing of the shadow lines cast from each geological object, on twelve specific locations and lines of latitude. Each day a geological object was placed upon a sheet of paper set up before dawn. As the sun rose in the east Hitchens traced its first shadow cast upon the surface of the paper with a pen, taking about two minutes to complete. In that small space of time the Earth had spun just a little on its axis, advancing the shadow and he would immediately start drawing the new shadow line. This process was repeated relentlessly until either a cloud obscured the sun, and there was no shadow to draw, or the sun dipped below the western horizon at the end of the day.

These are process-based drawings made in, of and about the landscape; the result of a particular set of conditions, in a particular place, over a particular span of time. They record celestial time, geological time and human time as well as the weather patterns unique to that day and site: a meditation on time and space. Even the solidity of mountains given time, will eventually erode into nothing, echoing the transience of human life.

The twelve sculptures are casts of the midday shadows from each of the twelve geological time periods, directly indexed to each drawing and quite literally making the fourth dimension, three-dimensional. Made from cast iron they give form to the negative, liminal space of shadows. They accurately record the haptic qualities of the Earth’s geology at a specific time and location, linking us to the past through the present and connecting us to something larger than ourselves.