Collaborating with Himley Hall and Park on a site specific project, looking at the way nature reclaims and regenerates, especially around the fringes and edges often unseen or overlooked. Himley Hall was built on the wealth generated through mans exploitation of the natural environment, mining, quarries, and the Industrial Revolution. Sat in the Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark the work is grounded in landscape, it also holds voices from the shadows—the traces of labour, migration, and lived experience embedded within these environments. These histories are not directly illustrated, but remain present within the layered surfaces and shifting forms.
The project is rooted in the Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark, where deep geological time sits alongside the legacy of extraction and industry. Limestone, fossil beds, and coal seams underpin a terrain shaped by mining and labour. What remains is transformation: quarries filling with water, canals cutting through industrial remnants, vegetation steadily reclaiming disturbed ground.
The region has been shaped by generations of migration, forming a culturally layered society alongside its geological and industrial histories. These overlapping layers—geological, industrial, ecological, and social—continue to define the identity of the West Midlands, held both in the land and in the lives of those who inhabit it.
Rewinding the Ground will be developed through site-based research, filming and sound recording across Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, and Wolverhampton, focusing on locations where these layers are most visible. My interest lies in the geography of the region as lived and experienced, workshops will be held with local schools and elder community groups, to collect these oral histories.
Water flows through the landscape of the Black Country, with areas of pollution, toxic waste and algae blooms, as a wild swimmer, it sickens me to think of the complete disregard for something so precious to our existance. Collecting water samples and developing film with this bacteria to create images. “Nature is visceral, wild, unfiltered, I want my work to embody that. To create something raw, that is felt, something real. I feel a deep and instinctive pull toward the natural world – especially quiet, often overlooked places: paths, riverbanks, the edges of land”.
Work in progress a quick glimpse into the experimental process of creating new work. Here I am using found pigments from earth and plants along the margins, to create paint with layers and then rubbing back the surface to add more layers. Pooling and pouring, rubbing and eroding replicating nature and mans interventions, at these local reclaimed sites and nature reserves.
