The series The Longest and Darkest of Recollections considers notions of time, memory and the construction of knowledge. Alongside photographs, playfully exploring the methods used by geologists searching for evidence in the ‘deep time’ of rock formations, is a text directed to the artist’s ageing father in the light of his fading memory.

The work is informed by Orton’s visual research into the practices and gestures of touch and measurement used by geologists. It fuses scientific and sensual knowledge with other more personal systems of understanding, while subtly questioning the role of photography as fixed evidence. It speaks of an ongoing curiosity about geological history, and obsessions with systematising and categorising time and the earth.