Napoléon’s Telescope is Glover’s latest component of her Playgrounds of War series. This series uses pinhole photography, scanograms and stereoscopic installation portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte to throw light on Britain’s forgotten military past and how people think of military conflict today. Earlier parts of the series examined abandoned military sites in Britain, Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Russia and Lithuania.
Napoleon’s Telescope provides a more playful addition to Playgrounds of War series. Glover uses her pinhole camera to depict the Martello Towers on England’s Essex Coast. These brick towers, built in the early 1800s to withstand sea-born assault by Napoleon’s forces, are observed through a circular black frame.
The influence here is Napoleon’s famous telescope. Thus we see the Martello Towers as Napoleon might have seen them, albeit with some recent additions to the landscape, such as caravan sites.
The staging of the exhibition of this work at Jaywick Martello Tower has been supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England funding.
