Conceptual nominee

This series began as a reflection on the roots of nationhood, an idea that was eventually realised in the late medieval Treaty of Westphalia, signed after the 30 years war (1618-1648). An innovation that promised co-existence between ideologically opposed groups with competing or antithetical interests across agreed boundaries. An end to endless war.

As the work progressed it became a broader enquiry into an earlier instinct—the basic drive to boundary, to encircle, to classify and delineate. To carve habitable order out of chaos. I became interested in representing the earliest aspirations toward human dominion, long before any such thing came to be.

Jason Kilmister is a London based photographer and visual artist.

His work ranges from large format colour images to video and sculpture characterised by a desire to represent a psychological space, somewhere between illusory and real, a place half remembered.

The work combines digital and analogue processes, merging darkroom-exposed mixed media, collage and sculpture with digital composite techniques.

Kilmister combines a methodological approach with chance and intuition to find his way through concept and representation, his images an emergent property of a meticulous creative process.

Working predominantly with landscapes shot in a cinematic wide format Jason seeks to explore beneath the surface of everyday perception—to uncover what is occluded by the mental maps we use to make sense of our surroundings, to break down assumptions and probe the tension between objectivity and subjectivism. To pursue the elusive properties of memory, metaphysics and psychology.

Driven by the core belief that reality is a poorly understood medium, Kilmister's work reflects a fascination with aesthetic potential, the nature of truth and a sense of wonder fostered by a childhood spent between the South Downs, the Scottish Borders and India.