Conversations with the shooting wall Photo Series

Conversations with the Shooting Wall, Susan Merrick, 2020
Conversations with the Shooting Wall, Susan Merrick, 2020
Conversations with the Shooting Wall, Susan Merrick, 2020

This work forms part of a larger series of performative investigations in my home town of Aldershot, a military town in the South of England. The images are a response to the physical traces of the military that surround and saturate the town. These particular images formed part of a response also to a group exhibition ‘Saturated Space’ at the National Trust property, Sandham Memorial Chapel. The chapel houses a unique and original collection of murals/paintings by Stanley Spencer, who was commisioned to create the work in the chapel as a memorial to WW1.

I was particularly interested in the voices that could be invoked within the work, those who were in the paintings and those who were not. I took my tin can telephone to the old shooting walls from WW1 and WW2 that remain on the army land in Aldershot, and performed a series of listening activities at the wall – to camera. What voices would we hear? Which voices would be missing?