To say Kate Whiteford, the Scottish artist, is fascinated by archaeology is an understatement. Land drawings/ installations/excavations, her newly published, and sumptuously illustrated book, which describes much of her career as an artist, is essentially a peon to the belief in place-making. Central to this, in Kate’s view, is the process of archaeological enquiry, including excavation, that brings past places into the present. Unlike her peers in the contemporary pantheon of landscape artists – Hamish Fulton, Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Long – it is the prism and the different forms that archaeologists use as much as irresistible confrontations with imprints upon the land that distinguishes Kate Whiteford’s art.
This article is an extract from the full article published in World Archaeology Issue 38. Click here to subscribe