Robin Friend

For fifteen years, I explored the edgelands of the UK with my large format film camera looking for places to photograph that inhabited a magical sadness and what Victor Hugo described as “that kind of bastard countryside, somewhat ugly but bizarre, made up of two different natures.”

I’ve always been fascinated by sites where the natural and the human-made clash and interact to create new forms of beauty and ugliness. Central to this story is the struggle between humanity and nature, two contrasting forces fighting for control. But there’s also a part of Bastard Countryside that resides someplace else; in a fictive realm that gestures towards some unknown, a less certain landscape.

In November I will be publishing my apocalyptic, nocturnal series Apiary. It continues to explore the surreal and sinister haunting of the British landscape but this time flirts with notions of democracy and resistance through a black & white cinematic lens.

I’m also currently working on No Painting Shall Leave. It explores the remarkable Second World War chapter in the National Gallery's history when its collection was stored in a disused Welsh slate mine.

And finally I will also be producing a photography collection of Artists in their studio, 222 to be precise. These are from two large book commissions I did fresh out of art school for the publisher Thames & Hudson. I remember I was like a rabbit in the headlights meeting all these incredible people and the experience definitely changed me and helped me become a better artist.