Great Camps of the Living and the Dead
Contemporary Perceptions and Interpretations of the Urban Landscape

Excerpts from an essay by Margaret Reid and Nick Rogers from the catalogue to the exhibition "An Urban Landscape", Nash House, Maidstone, 1992.

'...A similarly conceptual approach to the depicting of the landscape is present in Simon Burder's work, although a large part of his compositions were drawn directly from the view in front of him. Certain elements of some of the works have been superimposed onto an existing view to create a composite landscape.  In "Limekiln Harbour" the circular forms of the kilns in the foreground are not only represented from more than one viewpoint at the same time, but their placement  within the landscape has also been altered.  However...their presence is not incongruous with the rest of the environment; their circular forms both contrast with and complement the natural surroundings.

'…in Simon Burder's drawings and monoprints man's presence is only implicit in the built structures portrayed.  In "Wildness and Community", the artist depicts the group of buildings in which he, and others, were staying whilst on the Pembrokeshire coast, yet there is no sign of their human presence in the work--no smoke from the chimneys, no cars parked outside, no washing hanging out to dry.  The subtly gradated black and white tones of the monoprint, a technique which relies on the wiping away of ink from a metal plate, add to the feeling of bleak desolation, although the sheltering curve of the cliff around the tiny village does help to provide a sense of security.  In the drawing of gorse, taken from a contrastingly low viewpoint, we see nature unchanged by man; yet the dense foliage above the intertwined roots affords a similar kind of protection as that provided by the sheltering cliff.

For Jacques Derrida in "Writing and Difference", the fact that the uninhabited city, even if "reduced to its skeleton by some catastrophe of nature or art" still remains "haunted by meaning or culture" is what prevents it from returning to its natural state.  It is perhaps because of the lack of human beings in Simon Burder's images that the buildings seem, to a certain extent, to be in harmony with nature.  The kinds of memories of which Derrida writes, however, do assail us as viewers, and we are aware, as Simon points out, that the harbour "may be a resting place for boats come in from the sea" and that these are "places where people have been and might still be, although they are not apparently present".'


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