Ascending Ballard Down — Joshua Brooks

Paul Nash was a British landscape painter, photographer and writer (1889 - 1946). While he was living in the small seaside town of Swanage, Dorset, he experimented with surrealism, and although Surrealism was a movement that had its roots in Paris, Nash's surrealism was undeniably English. Heavily influenced by a visit to the stone circles at Avebury in the thirties, Nash captured in his work a link between the ancient and the modern, creating a plane where both could exist side by side.

Ascending Ballard Down is a film aimed at capturing the presence of Paul Nash and his work in the contemporary landscape of Swanage. By using his work as a guide,. the film will follow the journey of a lone cyclist as he travels from Sandbanks ferry to Swanage bay. This journey is fractured by small observational episodes that will investigate specific details of the landscape that relate directly back to Nash and his work.