TERRE À L'AMENDE

Encouraged to investigate the landscape of Guernsey through a commission from the Guernsey Photography Festival, Mark Power began to explore different ways of looking, and recording, the same place through a series of long-walks spending several weeks on the island. The first thing he noticed was the profusion of signs proclaiming ‘Terre à l’Amende’, threatening a fine for trespassing. This, along with mile upon mile of walls and fences delineating private land, only served to alienate Power and reinforced his position as an outsider here. He was acutely aware that Guernsey markets itself to the outside world as an idyllic holiday destination, but as Power began to look carefully it wasn’t difficult to see what might lie beneath. Revelling in this irony, he deviated from traditional picturesque representations and instead went in search of this contrary vision; one of an uneasy, unsettling place where all might not be as it seems.