This series has developed from the Groundwork Gallery’s Extraction Residency, where I began to think about alternative, future, and speculative realities. The philosopher Jane Bennet’s concept of Vibrant Matter and Susan Simard’s Wood Wide Web influence these propositions.
The translocation of living material from Cadishead and Little Woolden Moss references the ancient landscape of meres and mosses that existed in Manchester pre-Industrial Revolution. Mosses are one of the species that find a niche within our built environment, exploiting cracks in our construction. Their resilience represents something hopeful in a time of anxiety.
We are used to seeing moss taking over walls and buildings. It evokes the abandoned and the derelict, somewhere without humans. Here moss breaks through the walls into a well-used, maintained space, no longer either/or but both together. By allowing a swathe of living environment into the built environment, these installations make a statement about the worth of the biosphere around us; redefining our relationship with the more-than-human.
Interloper, 2023
Moss, sheep’s wool felt, linen thread
Site-specific artwork arising from an awkward built space; a crack between walls.
Installed for SPARK: Artist Interventions in a Time of Crisis, an exhibition curated by Sophy King and John-Paul Brown. The exhibition brought together a network of North-West artists who have been meeting since June 2022. Their monthly events have included guerilla gardening, moss walks, exploring urban and rural ecologies, tours of political sites and exhibition visits. The exhibition aimed to engender conversation and collaboration and foster the cross-pollination of ideas. The artists examine how their interventions can affect change, questioning whether art can be productive with or without overt activism. The exhibition, programme and conversations deriving from them will shape the future direction and plans of the Spark Artists Network.
Thresholds, 2024
Moss, sheep’s wool felt, linen thread, leftover OSB, scrap plasterboard
Commissioned for The Old Entrance Hall at the Whitaker Museum in Rossendale, The Thresholds create a liminal space, like portals into a parallel world where our built environment invites a wealth of biodiversity to share space equitably. They hark back to a pre-Industrial landscape of meres and mosses. This work is a positive affirmation that we are able to pivot to living within the parameters of our planet and a non-extractive, regenerative response to the world.
Portal, 2024
Moss, sheep’s wool felt, linen thread, leftover OSB, scrap plasterboard, 5000yr old peat pine branches
A sister piece to Thresholds, the Portal spans space and time, beginning to allow more incursions of the tips of twisted branches. The moss evokes the abandoned and the derelict, somewhere without humans. Here the branches break through the walls into a well-used, maintained space, no longer either/or but both together. There seems to be something coming through from an unspecified other side. The branches are 5000 year old peat pine from a spent commercial peat site.
Welcome to the Cthulucene, proposed
A tree creature begins to emerge from the portal