James Smith
2001-2002
The free markets in the early years of Thatcherism are now initiating regeneration. In the North corner of Northamptonshire lays the steel town of Corby, in the late Seventies this town had a population of approximately 50,000, 25 years on (2001) this has grown to just 53,000, 65% of those being Scottish.
At the turn of the 20th century Corby was a cluster of houses set inside woods, by the middle half, Scottish workers had migrated south in their thousands due to the downturn in the Clyde Valley’s steel industry and in turn Corby became a major force in the global steel trade.
Deforestation, then globalisation, now Islandisation, the word describes manmade isolation. An example would be a tree that has been left standing from was once part of wooded land, that is now a field of corn, or where something as a road cut through a vast forest, in the case of Corby the analogy of severed rail links (1967-2009) will create an impassable barriers for certain residence; the space of Islandisation will have begun.
This work is a chronograph of the transition between the later stages of Islandisation and the onset of regeneration, 2001 – 2002.