The Watch Man – Balnakiel: Shona Illingworth

This publication revolves around two key works by the artist Shona Illingworth. Made one after the other between 2006 and 2009, the video and sound installations The Watch Man and Balnakiel are highly personal but extraordinarily resonant studies of memory, history and place that examine the damage that is done to the psyche by the experience of war and the equally pervasive and insidious marks that have been left on the physical landscape by the presence of the military. Informed by a longstanding collaboration between the artist and the cognitive neuro-psychologist Professor Martin A. Conway (whose written contributions and distinctive ‘memory drawings’ punctuate the book), the background to these pieces is further elaborated in a trio of specially commissioned essays by Caterina Albano, Jill Bennett and Steven Bode.