Big Fence / Pitcairn Island

Pitcairn Island – legendary and infamous. A volcanic blip in the vast blue of the Pacific: two miles by one; Britain’s last Pacific Overseas Territory. In 2015, just one child and 42 islanders remained. I lived on Pitcairn alone for 96 nights, followed by a 21 day sea voyage aboard the island's quarterly supply vessel to New Zealand, the only way on or off. The project evolved as I was there, changing as my own entrapment intensified. Pitcairn is well known as the archetypal paradise – made famous as Mutiny on the Bounty island, an Anglo-Tahitian idyll, with multiple Hollywood adaptations reinforcing the fiction. But more recently, another, darker, side to the island came into view. Secrets that had ripped the community apart. Spurred by testimony from one brave Pitcairn girl, 8 Pitcairn men were convicted of sexual crimes against young girls in 2004 and 2007, one of whom is the island’s current mayor, Shawn Christian, patrilineal descendant of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutineers. Paradise Lost. On Pitcairn, every problem is amplified, and there is no respite – honesty is eclipsed by need, women relying on their abusers. In this most isolated of places, claustrophobia prevails. A complex and tense environment where loneliness and secrecy thrive. Relationships are fractured, locations bare scars. Was it possible to move on, and, more importantly, had it? There was an inherent irony in my project – despite the negativity of the work, it also now plays a part in cementing the island's legendary status, a status that in turn was partially to blame for the perpetuation of abuse. -- Unwanted sexual advances and public showdowns peppered my stay. The narrative course of the work changed through my time on the island, the islanders fears of my presence became confirmed in the final work, but only as a result of their own actions – it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Almost everyone was photographed in private, inside – away from judging eyes. With each subject I had just one opportunity - many taking months of coercion. As a result, those absent in the project perhaps tell a more potent story than those who are included. In the full project, empty rooms, rock fissures, and damaged found photographs of long departed islanders hint at a concealed darkness. Archive is combined with the new images to recreate the discombobulating experience of life on Pitcairn where truth and myth are intertwined.