Richard Ansett — Documentation — Lion Hunting in Essex

Polaroid 669, St Ostyth Village © Richard Ansett 2012

On Sunday 26th August, 2012, a couple’s reported sighting of a large cat like creature in the fields surrounding St Ostyth near Clacton-on-Sea, Essex provoked a massive police response and world media attention. Search teams including two helicopters with thermal imaging equipment scoured the countryside. A spokesperson stressed, the incident was not being treated as a hoax. Mr and Mrs Atkin who spotted the creature said “Whatever it was, it’s definitely still out there.”

In my landscapes taken during the ‘state of emergency’ the ‘creature’ is equally present and absent. This project uses this absence to explore how primitive instincts of our otherwise masked pre-modern selves still exist as fear of the unknown in our contemporary selves. The resulting images are an invitation to reflect on how these instincts can be exploited by politics and media. Further, the re-connection to these primal fears sub-consciously present and projected, alter our relationship to an otherwise banal and ultimately unchanged landscape and fit with my long term themes of our relationship to reality space. See One for Sorrow.

Reference from media © Roland Hoskins

INTERVIEW WITH STEVE AND GILL ATKIN

Reference from News Media. Searching: Police were seen patrolling areas around Earls Hall Farm in St Osyth, near Clacton, Essex (Image ©: PA)

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