Taking as its subject our different perceptions of the British landscape, the film is a roaming exploration of our national identity and collective history. Using a 3D model of the United Kingdom, a variety of visual scenarios – poignant, nostalgic and absurd – are enacted using a ‘live’ animation technique. These scenes draw directly on user comments found below the line of videos and online newspaper articles concerning the English and British countryside.

What emerges is a meditation on the British landscape – both as an imaginary vision and as a new world digitally constructed. Colson’s animation practice draws mainly on his concurrent interests in digital architectural visualisation, landscape planning and video game walkthroughs. The latter is a popular genre of YouTube film making in which one user walks through the completion of a video game, identifying hidden obstacles and tricks, to help other users do the same. Colson’s video work increasingly draws on the techniques found in these online videos to show the construction of specific architectures and landscapes, while exploring the speculative viewpoints of the ‘users’ who inhabit these spaces.

The Green and Pleasant Land is the outcome of Colson’s residency period at the gallery earlier this year. During his residency, Colson started by investigating how architecture, urban planning, and real estate developments operate peripherally and within cities, and how they will influence social relations and the environment in post-Brexit Britain. The exhibition ultimately questions place and identity; The Green and Pleasant Land is a site where opinion, memory, history and highly charged emotion are given form, and are opened up for discussion and critique.