On The Island by Daniel & Clara (Video Installation)

On The Island, Daniel & Clara

single-channel video, 2020-2021, 100 videos total runtime 82 mins. Room 6, Harwich Arts & Heritage Centre

In the Spring of 2020 when the first lockdown was announced, Daniel & Clara unexpectedly found themselves residents of Mersea Island in Essex. Taking their permitted 1 hour of exercise per day to walk and explore the landscape, they began a body of work called On The Island. Consisting of 100 videos filmed over 1 year, each shows a moment of looking and listening to their new environment.

A response to the psychological impact of the global pandemic and the physical restrictions of lockdown, On The Island captures moments of deep engagement with the landscapes and weather through that strange year when we all found ourselves confined to our local environments.

Bio

Daniel & Clara are an artist based in Colchester, working together since 2010 across moving image, photography, installation and mail art. Their work grows from encounters with sites in the British landscape that are rich in personal or cultural resonance, thinking about the relationship between humans and the natural world through the lens of dreams, mythology, psychology and art history. Their recent projects have focused on exploring the environmental crisis as a psychological crisis.

Their work has been exhibited and screened at Bodleian Library (2026), Norwich Castle Museum (2025), Art Exchange, Colchester (2024), Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2021), By Art Matters, Hangzhou (2021), Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Grand Palais Paris & HKW Berlin (2020), Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2019), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019), Museu de Arte Moderna Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2019). In 2025 they were a recipient of the Henry Moore Foundation Artists Award.