DIG: Imag(in)ing Bigbury Camp

DIG Imag(in)ing Bigbury Camp is a cross-university research project with colleagues from Kingston University and the Royal College of Art in response to Bigbury Camp in Canterbury, Kent. In March 2025, Leah Fusco, Mireille Fauchon and Gareth Proskourine-Barnett presented a creative visual exploration of an Iron Age hill fort located in Howfield Wood, Kent. The site was occupied from about 350BC and may have been stormed in the one of the first engagements between the local peoples and the legions of Julius Caesar in 55BC. The exhibition moves between the ancient and contemporary, natural and artificial concepts of light to speculate on the relationship between technology and perception in historic landscapes. This project is the first in an ongoing collaboration as the Documentary Imaging Group (DIG).

3D scanning has transformed the way archaeologists are able to preserve fragile artefacts and reconstruct ancient architecture of historical significance. For his work in this exhibition, Gareth has employed technological tools used in modern archaeology, turning them onto a series of metalworks excavated from Bigbury Camp in 1962-63 to produce a new moving image work. As technical images (or objects) the metalworks enter into a complex system of duplications that distort and destabilise the original, where they can be remade as a futuristic and fertile ruin, forging ahead with the future rather than looking back to the past.

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