Richard Rigg

For his exhibition 'Lacuna' at BALTIC, Rigg has produced his most ambitious work to date – the major new commission 'A Clearing'. The ambiguous title of the work could refer to that moment where you finally find yourself out of the trees in an open space of a forest, an instance of apparent clarity or, conversely, it could signify something being erased. In the exhibition space visitors will find a mountain cabin. Invited inside, they will discover its interior to be a mountain landscape alive with plants. The project began with Rigg’s observation of fog over a mountain and his meditation on how the mountain could at once be both absent and present. 'A Clearing' also uncovers our complex potential connections and disconnections with landscape. Un-tethered from time and place, the cabin is a design hybrid taken from many sources from various periods. The landscape found within it is unremarkable and has no discerning features. Its rocks and stones are mainly taken from Torridon, a series of mountains in the Scottish Highlands, and are largely from the little-known Precambian period that predates human life. Repositioned within the manmade structure of the hut, these natural objects reflect how our understanding of the past is framed and constructed. The contained mountain also provokes our capacity to imagine a space beyond our known landscape.