Roi Kuper's solo exhibition features a new series of photographs of whisky distilleries in Scotland. The twelve photographs depict distilleries in different locations. Five are shown on the coast of the Island of Islay from different viewpoints: from inland, along the coastline, and from the sea. The other seven distilleries are located in the region of Speyside and are pictured as architectural punctuations in the landscape, sandwiched between land and sky, or enclosed by a variegated topography of moors, woods and hills.

The history of the Scotch whisky industry is one marked by boom, decline, mergers, and aggressive takeovers. This history is also defined by a shift in the latter part of the twentieth century from a production driven to a market driven approach involving an emphasis upon whisky brand building. This often entailed a romantic emphasis upon the authenticity of the product, upon local water sources and traditional production methods handed down through generations. The romantic aura of the whisky brand thus created supported its market value as a luxury commodity. Kuper’s photographs with their suggestion of the romance of place seem to allude to such promotional practices, but this is not his intention. He is not interested in the industry or the market, or in the mystifications of advertising. Rather he is concerned with what his images can become as metaphor, in how specific physical landscapes can become landscapes of the mind through photography.

It is this concern with metaphor that defines the three parts of Kuper’s ‘To Eat of the Leviathan Flesh’ trilogy that began with ‘Atlantis’, continued with ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, and is completed by the current pictures. Photographs of particular locations - the sea from the Portuguese coast, Dover from the sea, and distilleries in Speyside and Isley – are meant to carry local myths, but also encapsulate wider meanings about human experience.

Simon Faulkner, Manchester, April 2008