Rob St John / Örö
Örö is an artist’s book, music and film release created by artist and musician Rob St John. It was produced through long-term fieldwork and experimentation on the small Finnish Archipelago island of Örö.
Closed to the public for a century after the establishment of military fortifications, the Örö ‘fortress’ island was reopened in 2016. Through the Öres programme, Rob stayed in former barracks on the island for two midwinter and midsummer periods across this transition, as abandoned military structures fell into ruin and rare biodiversity flourished. His film was installed in a disused building on the island in the summer of 2022.
Rob’s work with sound, film, images and writing on Örö have been collected in an ambitious new multimedia release on Blackford Hill. An artist’s book includes writing on the development of artistic practices through slow, patient attention to an island in flux. The texts fuse art, ecology, geography and history to explore the landscape’s multiple histories and futures. Richly illustrated with Rob’s photographs, cameraless prints, cyanotypes, maps and sketches, the book has an embossed foil-blocked cover.
The release includes access to Rob’s Örö installation film, which documents the island’s unique landscape. The film is accompanied by a sound work which is composed using field recordings and sonifications of environmental data such as ocean eutrophication, geological formation and forest photosynthesis.
“Örö is a multi-media extravaganza, another aesthetic triumph from Blackford Hill”
Four environmental soundscapes taken along transect walks across the island are also included in the release. These pieces document the creaks and groans of midwinter sea ice, the birdsong of midsummer pine forests, the hum of military radar, the chirps of insect life in sphagnum bogs, the echoes of abandoned underground bunkers, and the resonations of navy boat cannon fire.
The release includes two ‘singles’ – Midsummer and Midwinter – composed from the film soundwork with additional instrumentation from Pete Harvey (Modern Studies, King Creosote) on cello, and Andrew Wasylyk on piano and analogue synthesiser. A limited edition of the release comes with these singles – each ambient washes of melody, drone, found sound and field recordings – on lathe-cut 7” vinyl.
Rob St John is an artist and writer based in rural Lancashire, UK. His practice is focused on the blurrings of nature and culture in contemporary landscapes. His work has been shown/heard at Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum, The Barbican, The British Museum, Tramway Glasgow, The Royal Geographical Society, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and many others. He has released a number of records and toured across the UK, Europe and the USA. He plays with the band Modern Studies (Fire Records) and is a regular collaborator with the Folklore Tapes collective.
“One of the UK’s most innovative composers.” – Electronic Sound
“St John’s music is as interesting as the process which underpins it.” – UNCUT
“A man playing the calls of Maltese birds bouncing off an underwater telecommunications cable? Rob St John and Tom Western sound like new wayward Aphex Twins…” – The Guardian
“[His work] lets us hear what happens when we lay our ears to a landscape; the voices and utterances that surface into the skull.” – Robert Macfarlane