Irene Chapman is a post-conceptual artist whose work reflects on how landscape can recall to the moment we realise the existence of the absurd.

Albert Camus described the feeling of absurdity as elusive and able to strike us at any moment. Instead of the sensation itself, we often remember the image we were seeing when it happened; the specific shade of the sea that day, or the silhouette of someone walking. These images are what she focuses on.

The terrains that appear in her pieces are the Mediterranean landscapes of her hometown in Almería, Spain. Printmaking, film, writing and painting are all used to create storylines about the sea, coastlines and nearby desert, often in the form of books. Her main focus is being intuitive and showing her process, with a collage approach to every medium she uses.

Through this she explores the human awareness of landscape and its intricacies when we become a part of it. The hills are viscerally recognisable to those who know them; we know the shapes that are created by shadows as the sun sets every day. Slowly each of these details weave themselves into the mind, creating a landscape that is immortalised in every moment you spent looking at it.

Using repeating symbols that the viewer begins to identify, she creates a world of her own. In every new environment she finds herself in, she takes away symbols that integrate into the mosaic that is her practice.