E R O S I O N L A N D S C A P E S
Selected images were exhibited as part of Above and Below, an exhibition of new works responding to the themes celebrated by Marcus Verget’s marvellous Time and Tide Bell project.
The exhibition was produced in association with Professor Corinna Wagner (University of Exeter); and is a project supported by the UK Climate Resilience Programme and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
The exhibition was produced in association with Professor Corinna Wagner (University of Exeter); and is a project supported by the UK Climate Resilience Programme and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
|
This series forms part of an ongoing body of work with the broad umbrella title of ‘Redrawing the Landscape’.
Composed of photographs and sketchbook paintings and drawings from the last decade, examining coastal areas I am able to visit regularly and know well. Whether tourist spots or sites of post industrial heritage, our coasts - those liminal spaces between one realm and another - are fragile states, constantly in flux, often recording the presence and impact of humanity in a visual imprint. 
|
The work is site-specific, in that it is concerned specifically with the coastal environment of Dawlish Warren: a fascinating environment between the sea and the outer reaches of the South West Main Line, where coast, river estuary, sand dunes, nature reserve and funfair exist beside and inside each other. The coastal environment here is fragile and constantly in motion. Whilst I hesitate to use words such as “documenting” and “recording” in the conventional sense; nevertheless these works are a psychogeographical imprint of the passing of time in this place - quite literally the sands of time. I describe my work as visual archaeology: palimpsests of time, place and people and the impact of each upon the other, the traces left behind.
|
The method of working - of layers constantly added and taken away; of incremental changes - is symbiotic with the place and subject matter. The repetition of figures or structures within the work become symbolic of the subject. In this case, I have been recording the man made structures of groyns and lathe fencing - one seeks to hold the sands in place against the tide; the other engaged in the equally impossible task of holding humanity away from the fragile environment of the dunes.