Masters Final Project: Sedimentation

 

Material processes and the recuperation of lost, ignored and forgotten ways of knowing and methods of making, inspire this body of work. Intrigued by the multiplicity of materials and methods, the liminality and intra-connectivity of art-craft practices. Re-using, reducing, repurposing materials to minimise consumption and waste, combines with mindful making and the emplacement of found (gifted) objects.

 

As a response to an individual and collective disconnect with the rest of nature, particularly relating to our relationship with water, I took myself on a personal pilgrimage walking the length of the river Tay, the longest river in Scotland.

 

From source to sea, one hundred and twenty miles.  Wild camping, carrying supplies and drinking river water, collecting water from the source as well as urine from the river water drunk.  From one body of water to another, documenting my journey along the river and a journey of the river through me.  Dying wool with woad (natural blue dye) using the ancient sig (urine) vat fermentation process, in preparation to weave the fabric of life.

 

A sedimentation of experience, this work considers a re-orientation of meaning and value, of the potentiality of re-positioning our perspectives and priorities.  Reflecting on, and responding to, alternative ways of knowing, many ways of knowing.  Relocating meaning back into an object itself through a reverence of the ordinary, an attention to the immaterial and a gratitude of the given.  Embodying and embedding the search for a deeper, truer, more positive connection with the Earth, with what it means to co-exist on this damaged planet. Encompassing impressions and expressions, alignments and dis-ease, absence and presence. It is more and less the sum of its parts.

 

Immersive, sensorial, symbolic.  Intentional, elemental, axial.  Integral.