About Jemma Gunning

A ruin among the landscape is a powerful fragment; it provides a portal into the past and its decay constitutes the passage of time. It’s these transient elements that I am drawn to and have the urge to document as soon they will be obliterated from the landscape and replaced with shinny fabricated buildings. For the past two years, whilst completing a Masters in Multidisciplinary printmaking I have been investigating industrial decline in the UK. This is a continuous project which involves rural and urban exploring, searching the landscape for decaying architectural structures that contain historic significance. The etchings I produced of abandoned spaces I see as an artistic form of documentation, preserving a moment in time and keeping a record of the buildings continual state of flux. My aim is to make people slow down and consider the buildings that too many of us just walk past and ignore. Each Location I visit deserves to be remembered with all their underlying social history and not just another derelict and bankrupt industrial estate. Using various intaglio methodologies supports my vision in the subjects I am depicting. Textures and marks are important to my practice as it helps express what my eyes witness in the urban landscape. Etching uses an enforced decay, eroding the metal and resonating with the natural decay of the structures that I am recording. The surface marks that can be achieved through sugarlift and spitbite echoes the deterioration of masonry among crumbling architectural forms found among the landscape.