Sitelines is a response to Alan Garner’s cult novel The Owl Service. Initially developed as part of a collaborative deep-mapping project, over time the project grew to become increasingly reflexive with a weird folding of the artist into the work.

“I grew up with Garner’s early novels. Looking back I can see how they suggested a framework for mapping my own childhood boundaries: defined by ditch, field and hedgerow. But the Owl Service was something else.

Initially slightly too young for the book, my introduction in the 1970’s was via the TV adaptation.

I’m not sure I ever recovered.”

Seán Vicary explores the novel’s idea of the valley as a charged ‘reservoir’ for unseen forces but also as a driver for Garner’s (and consequentially his own) creative process; the immersion of oneself in a landscape/ place providing a conduit and the act of creation a channelling of those forces.

“I spent two years researching and working on location in the valley. I’ve collected, photographed and animated objects, including horsehair & lime plaster, handmade nails and a witch bottle. All these have a resonance with their place of origin and the haptic stop-motion animation process became an almost ritualistic invocation of sympathetic magic, creating a ‘receiver’ for tuning into residual wavelengths and decoding any hauntological transmissions.”