Matthew Austin

Interior Landscape is an exhibition of painting, sculpture, and sound that excavates the emotional sediments of an untold, often painful family history and my ancestral connection to Scotland, where the stories took place.

A large, nonrepresentational oil-diptych layers sand, modelling paste and achromatic black tones to create depth, texture and sheen. Arising from my broader, embodied experience as a queer man, this central work seeks to externalise and transform an array of feelings including loss, shame and emptiness.

Stacks of cut rectangular canvas adorn the wall and floor. These smaller works feature layers of paint, sand, soil and studio detritus echoing the accrual of intergenerational memory.

The works are accompanied by an ambient soundscape, including distorted field recordings from significant sites in Shetland and Edinburgh, bagpipes, traditional singing, wind, waves and my own vocalisations.