A Book of Holes (2025). Three-screen films, mirrored columns. 13 mins. 10.2 x 2.3m projection. Photos by Nick Cooney
The film begins in a granite quarry drilled with hundreds of deep holes, made by testing drills used to set dynamite after the copper mines of Cornwall closed down. The quarry walls now resemble the compound eyes of Trilobites, extinct for 250 Ma. The Trilobite has a close relative in the horseshoe crab, an animal whose copper-based blood is now extracted by labs to test the purity of vaccines. Reynolds folds together thematics of extraction and ritual in a hall of mirrors in which the blue copper blood of the horseshoe crab is paralleled with abandoned mine tunnels, running blue with copper deposits.
The constellation of scientific, industrial and poetic connections in this essayistic film are held together by beats from dance music tracks, made exclusively from sound samples recorded in the quarry, where the hundreds of deep holes each have their own resonance.
A Book of Holes is collaged from sources including 16mm film, VHS recordings, archive mining films, and casual i-phone uploads, tracking through vast scales of time, while a voice-over typed out at the rate of speech impassively details key facts and time scales.
In a full installation, the viewing space for the film is pierced by mirrored shafts. The work connects Cornwall’s the geology of post-industrial landscape with global stories of industry, exploitation, and environment.