MA Fine Art Final Degree Show, UCA Farnham
Field Works, 2022, installation, dimensions variable
Field Works centres on observation and research as a form of methodology. With focus on landscape as place and metaphor, the work considers concepts of time in connection with presence and absence. Outcomes are realised as conversations with unseen protagonists of the landscape direct the work towards the discovery of matter and the collection of data. Exploring methods of performance in response to site it searches for initiatives which link activities across time.
Field Works, installation view, UCA, Farnham
A Field Guide to Leftover Matter, 2022, grass, leftover objects, paper, fishing wire, dimensions variable
A Field Study, 2022, artist book, 210 x 200 x 20 mm
In the Field, 2022, digital film, duration: 20.04min
Concept of Work
The aim of the practice seeks to encounter and discover knowledge and understanding through relationships with event, place, material and process. Field Works arises from a collection of objects, unearthed while working the land. The assortment of emerging fragments consist of wholes or parts of tools, crockery, bottles, fencing, electronics, children’s toys and more. Their journey to the depths of the soil are lost in time and as leftover matter they enter the dimensions of waste as ‘objects no longer commensurable with our action.’
Not looking to create but to re-create, the objects become a means to find arrangements where they can once again have a functioning future. Using the concept of a grid or even a field as a grid to set boundaries and enclosures, the objects are given the opportunity to reconfigure a multitude of placements and uses. The work explores the earth, the soil and fields as an entity that holds not only the dead and waste but living things. It sees the field as the hoarder of knowledge, containing obscured and unknown traces. Clues to the past, present and future are encased within the field, despite its perceived state of emptiness.
-
![]()
A Field Guide to Leftover Matter brings the field, as an entity associated with external spaces, into a space that is internal in order to create a prescribed scenario for observation. Distorting the natural order of things further, the grasses hang upside down with their tips on the ground.
-
![]()
Arranged into a grid, the grasses provide a framework for the leftover matter to hang, suspended above.
-
![]()
Inverting the objects and grasses 180°, the once buried and hidden objects are elevated and float in a space in plain view. Turning its world upside down the work creates an inverted scenario and imagines alternative perspectives.
-
![]()
The grasses and objects are placed in front of a roll of graphite grey photographic paper. Alluding to characteristics associated with the photographic studio, the stage, arranged as a means for observation, renders more false.
-
![]()
A Field Guide to Leftover Matter becomes about the play between the objects and the grasses. It uses the grid and the paper to provide the basis for play to unfold. Turned on its head, the work veers away from reality and towards a scenario of observation that highlights material and placement.
In the Field
The films framework follows a comfortable and natural rhythm marked by interruptions that follow regular intervals along a timeline. Long grass embodies the space in one single take for 20 minutes. Objects of leftover matter and seasonal data come and go as technology distorts and bends seemingly inanimate depictions. Sounds from the field, the voice and instrumental components ascend and descend to accentuate the drama and theatre of the emerging and disappearing matter. Apparitions, dancing within the frame in time and space, give the viewer fleeting glimpses of the magic that extends from very ordinary and mundane components.
