These works are direct responses to place, time and materials. I develop the idea for each land installation on-site in dialogue with the material that nature has put there. I work with the lightest of touches, making marks that add nothing and take nothing away in material terms. When I feel my job is done, it’s not necessarily the end of the work. Time plays its part. I abandon the construction where it is, leaving it and its environment to create a unique history.
Documentary photographs are now the only visual record of the installations. In this role, they become artworks in their own right.
Chesil Bank
Plinth
2022
Land installation
Chesil Bank, Portland, Dorset
Indigenous found materials
175 x 96 cm
Wedge
2022
Land installation
Chesil Bank, Portland, Dorset
Indigenous found materials
336 x 105 cm
Sway, New Forest
Forest Driftwood (Setthorns)
2022
Land installation
Sway, New Forest, Hampshire
Indigenous found materials
22 x 155 x 382 cm
Forest Driftwood (Setthorns) Unfinished Disintegration – A History in 17 Instances
2022-23
Land installation, Sway, Hampshire
Documentary photographs in chronological order
C-Type print
76.2 x 107.4 cm
Bringing the work inside
This is a same-size edition of Forest Driftwood (Setthorns), borrowing the same site-of-origin materials gathered from around the initial work. Away from the land, the sensory experience changes. In the studio, the dry, fermented aroma of dead gorsewood fills the space. The site-specific soundscape I Think of the Forest I accompanies it. This was recorded on a sequence of walks that brought me to the abundant material.
In the background: Photograph – Forest Driftwood (Setthorns); Soundscape – I Think of the Forest I, 2022
Forest Driftwood, Setthorns (Avatar)
2022
Floor installation, Arts University Bournemouth
Studio replica of a land installation
Found, borrowed gorsewood
23 x 155 x 382 cm
I Think of the Forest I
2022
Audio
Composition from digital field and studio recordings
00:10:27
Forest Driftwood (Setthorns)
2022
Sway, New Forest, Hampshire
C-Type black and white photograph
121 x 85.5 cm