Shot largely on the same set of beaches in Portugal over a period of two years, Edgar Martins’ The Accidental Theorist is a series of instants that are filled with stillness and silence. The beach landscape is familiar and ubiquitous, yet here it becomes imaginary and unreal. All that typifies the holiday experience – parasols, loungers, people enjoying the sea, sun and sand – is missing. The pervasive tranquillity is not reassuring, but discordant and eerie. Instead, there is an overwhelming sense of the theatrical and melancholic. The coast is rendered as little more than an empty theatre stage, waiting for a performance to begin.
