Jemma Gunning

Robinson and Sons

Jackson's Art Prize 2025
Etching
Paper
30 x 49 cm

£245

“Robinson and Sons is an etching created after a three-month residency in the Peak District, where I explored and recorded the post-industrial landscape. This former manufacturing site, once alive with industry, now stands as a quiet testament to shifting economies and changing times. Layers of rust, weathered brick, and decaying infrastructure reveal a history of labour slowly being reclaimed by nature. Etching was the perfect medium to translate this landscape onto paper—the process itself echoes the erosion and wear found in these abandoned spaces. By repeatedly immersing the plate in acid, I built up layers of tone and texture, much like time has inscribed itself onto the structures I recorded. The rich blacks and delicate greys, achieved through aquatint, mirror the play of light and shadow across these forgotten buildings. This work is part of a wider investigation into the beauty of decline, the remnants of industry, and the fragility of human-made structures. Robinson and Sons invites viewers to reflect on what is left behind when industries collapse—how spaces transform, how histories linger, and how traces of the past continue to shape the present.”