Quinn

Quinn addresses the questions of how individual humans and human society as a whole respond to trauma, loss and grief, using a mixed media multi-disciplinary practice as research. 

Quinn

    Project details

    Project lead Lottie Davies 
    Start date 2014
    End date 2021

    Quinn addresses the questions of how individual humans and human society as a whole respond to trauma, loss and grief. Each generation experiences changes imposed by conflict, environmental events and global socio-economic upheavals, leaving a stream of people either literally travelling alone or in groups or families to rebuild their place in the world, or individually attempting to overcome personal tragedy or misfortune. Quinn explores responses to these, and asks whether landscape can be used as a tool for understanding, reconciliation and potential recovery. It is a meditation on the human search for meaning and the possibility of redemption. 

    The project’s principal research question was How do humans navigate grief, loss and trauma? Can interaction with landscape aid understanding, reconciliation and potential recovery? 

    Quinn is a mixed media multi-disciplinary art project, realised over a six-year period from 2014-2020. It follows on from Davies’ previous work exploring the artistic and photographic representation of memory and of historical and personal past moments, and the philosophical understanding of conflict and our collective past.  

    Following work such as that by Joel Sternfeld (On This Site, 1996), Broomberg and Chanarin (The Day That Nobody Died, 2008), Chloe Dewe Matthews (Shot At Dawn, 2014), and Larson Shindelman (Geolocation, 2009-16) and works of literature (Paul Auster, New York Trilogy, 1987), Quinn represents a major progression in Davies’ work. 

    Project team

    Lottie Davies

    Project lead - Lottie Davies

    Lottie Davies is a BAFTA-nominated artist and writer based in Cornwall and London. Her work is exhibited and collected internationally. She has been the recipient of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Award, The Young Masters Prize, and the Arte Laguna Prize for Photography amongst others. Her practice employs moving image, audio, text and interactive installation alongside photography.

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    Outputs & outcomes

    Quinn comprises large and medium format photographs, moving image, written narrative, installation and ephemera. The outputs were created to create a multi-dimensional experience; much like reading a novel, visiting the theatre, and going to the cinema at the same time.  

    The project has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions around the UK between 2019 and 2021, and a monograph Quinn published in 2021, and has generated substantial national and international press coverage. 

    Impact & recognition

    Media and news