Earlier this year I gave an artist talk at Lancaster University. I decided to write it up here:
Earthworks is body of work, Sculptural and on paper that focuses on the cyclical, sacred and fundamental nature of basic materials.
The mining and processing of which the modern world relies entirely upon. I am fascinated by the fact that our ethereal digital world replies upon the same materials that ancient civilisations did for theirs, and that it is the exploration of material processes that has propelled society ‘forward’.I am concerned that disconnection from the material world contributes to a misunderstanding of our basic needs as humans and a lack of reverence for the gifts we extract from the earth. The works that have emerged as a result of this fascination, contemplate a relationship between witchcraft and science, God and sand.
The following notes describe a little more about my practice generally and sum up the journey this particular work took me on so far:
In my studio I am led by process, working with my hands helps me to think, and ideas flow when I’m doing, not when I’m sitting and thinking about what to do. If I feel stuck I just pick something up and start messing. This means there is uncertainty and unpredictability in my work. Things evolve and are not predetermined. I believe its important to be ok with not knowing what you are doing. I like this quote from William Kentridge which relates:
I think there is an important polemical and political role in art. In defending the uncertain. In having critique of all forms of certainty. whether its on authoritarian politics or certainty of knowledge. Of making ambiguity and contradiction, its central lifeblood. Showing that these are not just mistakes at the edge of our understanding but the way in which our understanding is constructed. Of making us aware of constructing meaning rather than receiving information. These are all things that are natural to art.
Circumstance matters, the size of your studio, your financial situation, your stability and mental health all affect what you make. Understanding this led me to work with easily accessible, basic, domestic or found materials and processes much more.
There is a democratic element to art making and I feel that access to specialist equipment or expensive materials shouldn’t dictate who can be an artist and who cannot. I have found that this encourages innovation and resourcefulness. Restrictions are useful. An artist who can create with something of low monetary value and available to all, is also making their practice transparent. I think its important that art can’t hide behind privilege. Working in this way also enables me to run a workshop in virtually any kind of space.
In a similar vein I feel strongly about the moral responsibilities we have as artists. Many industries rely on a supply chain controlled by systemic rules and embedded bad practice, and the individual has little control over this. Artists don’t have to be part of this if they choose not to. Of course there are pressures to commercialise, bend to art market trends or be relevant to funding bodies, but it is a career where basic choices can be within the hands of the individual, and so for example I can choose to use materials that are not harmful to the environment or to re-use waste materials.
I was becoming interested in the stories that exist within material. What the properties of our environment teach us about being human. sometimes these manifest around places, or objects like this drawing of standing stones. I wanted to convey the feeling of presence or memory, but with the solidity of a real place. I’m interested in the depth and richness of textures and the imagery and narrative that can emerge when I'm creating them, part intuition, part intention. I use a very basic monotype process, building up layers of colour and texture from glass plates and then drawing on them afterwards. The metaphorical significance of layering and creating rich environments is important to me. Textures are the opposite of flat, there is a lot to be discovered within them - as a forest ecosystem relies on depth of material and decay for its survival and as an antithesis to clinical space.
The work I’m currently making is a series of small scale explorations of plaster, concrete, clay, stone and paper. as well as some relating drawings. Some of which I recently exhibited in my show ‘Earthworks’ They were inspired by a desire to play with simple and intuitive ways of making and have led to an expansion of ideas around material and processes. I see them as a sketchbook of work which has yet to find a way to conclude and I am excited about where it is leading me. I started by making forms using clay as a casting material and creating textures with tools and random objects.
I enhanced this plaster form with charcoal dust. The resulting textures were accidentally reminiscent of fossils and sea life. Living by Morecambe Bay I collected shells to look at in response to this, including this huge oyster shell on our nearest beach.
You can see the similarity between the two things, the textures of the oyster are rich, gnarly and wonderful. I also like looking at them as micro landscapes, imagining they were mountain ranges. It reminds me that scale is purely contextual. I was interested to discover that sometimes the gypsum in plaster of paris comes from sedimentary rock deposits made in ancient oceans.
These processes and cycles, both natural and man made are relevant, and they relate to the construction of meaning in my work.
I question the passing of time. Whether it is linear or cyclical. The natural world is cyclical, sand has been rock six times in its life already. I question whether our progress as a species is linear. Or is there some element of rediscovery in our technology. This work took a turn in response to a book I read. ‘Material World’ by Ed Conway, an economist interested in the history and relevance of raw materials. The story of sand, or more specifically silica or quartz the material that makes up most sand, was compelling and it opened up new avenues of exploration for me.
This is The Great Sand Sea, an impassable area of the Libyan desert also known as the Land of the dead, because historically nobody ever survived travelling through it. In the 1930s a party that did venture in found something crunching under the surface sand. In ancient times a meteorite had landed there and turned the desert into vast sheets of yellow glass.
This is a quote taken from the book:
Sand can be gloriously soft to touch but each grain is mightily hard, its astounding strength helping to explain why it is used for the physical foundations of the 21st century world. it is at once the basis of the very oldest and the very newest products humankind has learned how to manufacture.
It bookends civilisation.
Sand, you see is the most ancient and the most modern substance of all. It was our transformation of silicon into glass beads and cups and jewellery that marked the beginning of the era of homo faber - man the manufacturer. Yet this same substance can be used to create the smartphones and smart weaponry of the 21st century.
This interactive piece is a bit of an ode to sand. An aluminium tray containing pure silica sand, a glass object and a piece of carved white limestone. The opposing shapes and textures and the possibility of exploring each in relation to another is satisfying. I used the stone and the glass to shape the sand.
I ran a workshop for toddlers using this and several other different sand trays during my exhibition. Adults also played with them. I collect reclaimed and found objects which I work with alongside items I have made. I particularly like waste materials used in industrial processes, for example stone drill cores from quarries or discarded porcelain tumbling balls.
They have a story and a life that is mostly invisible and uncelebrated. I was interested to learn that desert sand cannot be used as a building material because strong winds turn the grains over and over until they are spherical. Builders sand is sharp edged so it locks together well. These tumbling balls start out square and end up beautifully round too, they are like giant desert sand grains.
This sculpture ‘Clay pipe clay feet’ plays with the relationship that a piece of victorian drainage pipe might have with a corinthian column, and the idea that a discarded functional item does not have to be inanimate, it has its own particular presence and life.
Quartz, which is the material most sand is made of, produces glass, lenses, prisms, fiberoptic cables. When you squeeze quartz it it emits an electric voltage and when you put a voltage through it vibrates at its own perfect rhythm, hence its use in keeping time. It is the basis of concrete, of silicon computer chips. The list goes on. All these underpin civilisation as we know it. I was particularly taken with a process called the CZ method which is described in the book. It is the turning of purified silicon into a single crystal which is then sliced into silicon wafers near the end of the journey from sand to silicon chip. For CZ you need to use a crucible made of very particular type of pure quartz, one you can only get in a single place in the world. It is very rare, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material. This quartz comes from a small town in North Carolina. (a later note, due to the recent severe hurricane this very mine has been destroyed, I wonder what this means for the supply chain) The mine is top secret. So much so that the outside contractors who repair machinery there are blindfolded until they are in front of the machine they are working on. Similarly, the labs where the CZ process takes place are automated and almost no one is admitted.
A diagram showing the CZ process
The silicon is melted in the crucible and then a pencil shaped piece of silicon called the seed is dipped into the melt. From this seed a single crystal of ultra pure silicon can be pulled. A huge blackish/purplish glassy cylinder rising from the melt, sometimes up to 2 metres long.
A silicon crystal made during CZ
The image of this thing rising from the molten rock intrigued me. It is striking, phallic, a little disturbing somehow. but beautiful too. The form itself fascinating. A crystal, so a naturally occurring form. The fact that all of it, the seed/crucible/melted silicon and the crystal all made of the same stuff, so odd. The whole process feels mythical to me, like a spell. I started to make things in my studio referencing this process.
Transcendance of Quartz
When I posted this drawing on my instagram. Somebody pointed out to me that it looks quite like a Shiva Lingum.
The Shiva Lingam is an abstract or aniconic religious symbol in Hinduism representing Shiva as the generative power of all existence. The word shiva means ‘that which is not’ or ‘no - thing’ The word linga means ‘the form’ .So: the form that explains that which is not, or perhaps the formless beginning of things. But why choose this ellipsoid to express these ideas? I’m interested in forms and the symbolism that is knowingly or unknowingly embedded within them. How we interact with them. I find correlations like that of the pure science of the CZ process with the pure religion of a shiva lingum useful in studying the world around me objectively. There are intersections between all parts of life and it is at the crossover points where ideas unrelated meet that the interesting things start to happen and we can learn something. I seek these places out in my work.
Several years ago my mum was invited to work with a community in the Australian outback. On a walk she was privileged to be shown a sacred place in the desert. A rocky outcrop with a huge quartz intrusion running through it and leading to a pool of water. Quartz has long been considered a powerful substance.
I learned that in indigenous Australian culture a shaman would swallow quartz as part of a ritual to induce visions and connect with the dreaming, this was of religious and cultural necessity and formed part of the structure of communities. In comparison we use quartz for the creation of silicon chips, powering our computers, with which we have created a digital realm existing alongside the material world. A collective consciousness dwelling not in the physical but in the ethereal, via invisible information transmitted through miles of fiberoptic cable also made from quartz. This world we have created also plays a significant part in the structuring of our own communities and our personal lives.
I made this vessel out of paper pulp and plaster of paris, and it sits on carved granite lumps. The bowl contains sand which has been dyed gold.
I like the idea of the ethereal being the dream of the material. That the rocks in all their forms, which I have always felt drawn to, have their own intelligence. A memory embedded in the material itself, revealed in part through its capabilities to drive our tech.
I have quite a few more sand stories to tell all of which I find as interesting as the last, but I’m going to stop there and not get carried away! I hope I have given an insight into my process and progress with this work. I keep finding tangents that I want to follow, each forming another strand to what feels to me like quite a large web. I want to develop the work I’m currently making to encompass this research and really bring it to life.
The Super Pit - a goldmine in Kalgoorlie
My final thought is that it is easy to forget that to serve our modern world we mine more raw materials than ever before and its on an ever increasing scale. In this country we are mostly no longer the ones going down the mines, we see nothing of the industry that sustains our existence as it almost all happens in other countries, but it is happening 24/7.
I think detachment from materials and the material, contributes to a lack of understanding about the reality of the many gifts we forcibly take from the ground. I read somewhere ‘if it’s not grown, its mined’ its basically as simple as that. There is something important about having a hands on relationship with it. To experience the textural differences between sand and clay, to feel the weight of different rocks. To see molten metal and experience its power. You can never understand something deeply until you experience it with your body.
We need an awareness that the stuff we walk on provides us with everything we need to stay alive and entertained. I think we need this kind of connection to yield the respect for the planet that we know we need to have.
