Walton Hall An Artistic Inquiry into the Nature Reserve as a Layered Entity
Abstract
This artistic doctoral research starts from the concept of the nature reserve as a layered spatial, historical, and ideological entity. The project investigates how political, social, ecological, and military forms of control shape such sites over time, and how the legacies of imperial and capitalist systems continue to inform their present conditions. Rather than approaching nature reserves as fixed ecological spaces, the research examines how their multiple layers can be articulated through visual and artistic practice.
The presentation at CA2RE focuses on Walton Hall (UK), widely considered the world’s first nature reserve, established in 1826 by Charles Waterton and now transformed into a luxury private golf club. Through a multidisciplinary and intermedial approach combining archival research, fieldwork, moving image, sound, text, and installation, the research explores how the layered histories of this site persist within its contemporary landscape.
The video work Dear Anne, developed from the Walton Hall case study, is shared at CA2RE as both artistic output and research method, and as a case study of intermedial artistic practice as knowledge production in research on spatial transformation.