STANTA (with surface samples)

With his installation STANTA (with surface samples) for the exhibition Ministries of Defence at Hungate deconsecrated church in Norwich, Matthew Flintham addresses the relationship between militarisation, cartography and landscape. It focuses on the restricted military zone in the heart of the East Anglian Brecklands known as the Stanford Training Area (STANTA).  Resembling a military planning table, the piece includes a scaled wire-frame representation of the restricted airspace that covers the area up to an altitude of 7500 ft, and audio speakers suspended over the table play fragments of sounds captured at each of the nine geographical coordinates that define the airspace. The work seeks to reveal the hidden dimensions of militarisation in the Brecklands, and examines the intimate nuances of this unique landscape.

STANTA (with surface samples) is a part of Flintham’s on-going examination of the military and surveillance landscapes of the United Kingdom.

Because of its historical relationship with the ‘lost’ churches within the Stanford Battle Area, St Peter Hungate is a suggestive and significant site for Flintham’s installation. For the duration of Ministries of Defence exhibition,  ecclesiastical and military geographies converge, emphasising the hidden histories of the Stanford Training Area and the ‘lost’ landscapes of the Brecklands.