Shona Illingworth's Lesions in the Landscape is a powerful new multi-screen installation revealing the devastating effects of amnesia on one woman, Claire, and the striking parallels with the sudden evacuation of the inhabitants of St Kilda in the North Atlantic in 1930.

Capturing the desolate internal landscape of Claire’s amnesia, this fully immersive installation portrays the remoteness of lost memories.

The calls of thousands of gannets circling a St Kildan sea stack merge with the electrical hiss of brain activity being monitored, as sensors explore the desolate landscape of Claire’s amnesia. These audible electrical signals are Claire’s memory attempting to recall images she has captured and steps she has walked, in an environment ingrained with its’ own profound sense of loss and isolation.

This immersive, site-specific environment presents Claire’s journey and the physical and cultural landscape of the archipelago as an interwoven exploration of memory, place, and identity. Illingworth’s densely layered moving image and sound work not only captures these striking parallels of forgetting -and their impact both on the individual and a larger community- but also explores how technology may allow us new ways to navigate, stimulate, or create memory.