European Ferries 2016 - 2018 European Ferries is a series of sixteen photographic works developed in response to the 2016 UK referendum and the subsequent reconfiguration of Britain’s relationship to Europe. Living approximately ten miles from the South Coast, my proximity to the shoreline shaped an immediate and embodied response to the referendum outcome. At Newhaven, East Sussex, an historically significant point of maritime exchange between Britain and continental Europe, I observed the arrival of a ferry from Dieppe while standing on the surrounding clay and chalk cliffs (see From Dieppe).
The Transmarche vessel’s yellow hull punctuated an otherwise muted blue coastal palette, producing an image that initially inspired romance before giving way to unease. This tension led me to consider the coastline as a liminal space, neither wholly open nor entirely closed, but instead a site where connection and exclusion coexist. The sea functions simultaneously as a conduit for exchange and as a defensive boundary, shaped by long standing political and cultural anxieties surrounding sovereignty, migration, and territorial integrity.
surrounding clay and chalk cliffs (see From Dieppe).
Prompted by this encounter, I began a sustained photographic investigation of European ferries arriving along Britain’s coastline. On a material level, the images document infrastructures of movement, routes that have historically facilitated economic, cultural, and social exchange between the UK and continental Europe. In the post referendum context, these same routes acquire a heightened symbolic charge, revealing the dissonance between physical continuity and political rupture.
I employ the horizon as a recurring visual and metaphorical device. The viewer is positioned between outward looking cosmopolitanism and inward facing nationalism. Through restrained composition and observational distance, European Ferries situates both myself and the viewer within this unresolved condition, framing the coastline as a contested zone where notions of belonging and separation remain in flux.
