A dictionary restricts the phenomenon of dreams to a series of events or images experienced in our minds during sleep, but they are far more complex than this. Dreams provide the sleeper with a liminal space: a place where the lines of time and reality become less distinct and sometimes blurred. The project ‘Terra Nullius’ (Nobody’s Land) employs an ordinary bed, a self-built lockdown creation, to act as a symbol of the journey through this transitional space between our conscious and subconscious states: marking the threshold where the dreamer has left reality behind, but is not yet in a subconscious state i.e. sleep.

The project, shot entirely within Scotland, encompasses all four seasons in a deliberate attempt to convey the way the changing seasons can alter our subconscious. The bed and my own presence remain constant within the body of work and should help to engage the viewer by allowing them to enter the images in a way that is significant for them.

The series of daydreams visualises an ideal, untouched landscape, flooding the viewer with a sense of calm and acting as a safe haven, perhaps even a vehicle for escapism. After all, daydreams are about drifting into a kind of sheltered imagination. The nightmares punctuate this peace with a fearful reality, distorted by subconscious anxiety into a surreal and threatening experience. In this way the bed becomes a spiral of fear when night falls. As a collective the images aim to convey something of my personal love for the Scottish landscape and the transitory, fleeting nature of both daydreams and nightmares, and the way these can rapidly spiral out of control, depending on one’s mood.

In presenting the project I made a conscious decision to include the bed itself, with a single daydream and nightmare image printed onto reverse sides of the duvet cover. This installation piece is enhanced by a Zine publication, in which the individual images retain their stand-alone quality, whilst giving a clear indication of the division between daydream and nightmare.

As Time does not feature in dreams, they can be thought of as inhabiting an eternal moment. However, almost always they have some basis in lived experience. Therefore, in titling the images I have used the actual times and places at which they were taken, pinpointed on a map of Scotland, to provide a key context to the project and to hint at the widespread and gruelling nature of the work.