loss in a landscape
2025
This series of work was in response to the 2025 Labour government planning and infrastructure bill.
The idea that nature gets in the way of 'progress' and can be offset is appalling and shortsighted.
If a habitat is destroyed then you can't just make new fresh habitat and expect nature to be ok.
What is damaged stays damaged.
The dead stay dead.
I took broken roofing slates as the base material for this work. A discarded item that could be made useful, beautiful again.
I then made stencils of creatures put in danger by the planning bill, Bats, Newts and a swift or two.
by laying the stencil on the slate and using "goldfinger' gilting medium, (a medium more usually used on picture frames, framing the loss...) I made a shinning outline of the creature, a shadow of their being.
These slate works were beautiful. The loss of the wild shimmering.
I then took the largest, one of a swift,
I laid it down on the tarmac path outside my house,
and I dropped a heavy bit of roofing joist onto it,
it shattered.
I remade it (as though you can piece together what has been smashed) and hung it as a mobile.
the fragments still beautiful,
but what we smash stays smashed.
No amount of BNG or offsetting can undo the act of destruction.
Beautiful and doomed. Precious Fragments.
none of these pieces are for sale, yet...
2025
This series of work was in response to the 2025 Labour government planning and infrastructure bill.
The idea that nature gets in the way of 'progress' and can be offset is appalling and shortsighted.
If a habitat is destroyed then you can't just make new fresh habitat and expect nature to be ok.
What is damaged stays damaged.
The dead stay dead.
I took broken roofing slates as the base material for this work. A discarded item that could be made useful, beautiful again.
I then made stencils of creatures put in danger by the planning bill, Bats, Newts and a swift or two.
by laying the stencil on the slate and using "goldfinger' gilting medium, (a medium more usually used on picture frames, framing the loss...) I made a shinning outline of the creature, a shadow of their being.
These slate works were beautiful. The loss of the wild shimmering.
I then took the largest, one of a swift,
I laid it down on the tarmac path outside my house,
and I dropped a heavy bit of roofing joist onto it,
it shattered.
I remade it (as though you can piece together what has been smashed) and hung it as a mobile.
the fragments still beautiful,
but what we smash stays smashed.
No amount of BNG or offsetting can undo the act of destruction.
Beautiful and doomed. Precious Fragments.
none of these pieces are for sale, yet...
