Ian Chamberlain
Ian is a senior lecturer in Drawing and Print and M.A Multi-disciplinary printmaking. His work investigates man-made structures. Reinterpreting them as monuments placed within the landscape.
Ian has had a longstanding fascination with technology and architectural forms, these have included structures within industry, agriculture, science and the military. Ian is interested in the use of a traditional Print process such as etching being used to record subject matter that is generally at the cutting edge of technology for its time.
The etchings become an extension of his drawing allowing him to record the location through the interlinking processes of drawing and printmaking.
Ian has exhibited extensively within the UK and Internationally.
Works
Goonhilly Earth Station
The two etchings – Sat.I and Sat.II – are based on the satellites at Goonhilly Earth station, the largest satellite Earth receiving station in the world with over 60 dishes of varying sizes. It is located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula.
Goonhilly is synonymous with innovative British engineering and technological skills and for being at the heart of the satellite communications industry. Goonhilly beamed the Moon landings to millions of viewers in 1969, Live-Aid in 1985 – it took part in almost every major satellite communication development.
The Atlantic Wall
This etchings The last stand and Shifting Sands form part of my ongoing research project titled ‘The Atlantic Wall’.
The Atlantic Wall offers contemporary relevance and a symbolic connection with current social and political debates around visible and invisible barriers. Some of these visible barriers from the past remain, isolated architectural symbols of permanence slipping into failure and decay, becoming a visual metaphor of the shifting political, social and environmental landscape.
Transmission Series
Since 1957 the Lovell telescope has been probing and investigating the depths of space, a symbol and monument of our wish to understand the universe. Even now it remains one of the biggest and most powerful radio telescopes in the world investigating the depths of space, gathering information that was completely unknown and undreamed of when it was created.
Teufelsberg Listening Station
In Berlin, the Teufelsberg Listening Station formed part of a global network of listening stations, run by the U.S. National Security Agency to intercept satellite signals, radio waves, microwave links and other transmissions from communist East Berlin.
Each of the globes at the station contained huge 12-metre satellite antennas and the most sophisticated spying equipment for the time. This relic of the cold war now lies abandoned after the fall of the Berlin Wall.