Terroir‘ n. ter·roir /ˌter-ˈwär/ /tɛrˈwɑr/ /tĕr-wär′/ the combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives wine grapes their distinctive character. [French, land, country, stretch of land in reference to its agricultural features, from Old French tieroir, from Vulgar Latin *terratorium, alteration of Latin territorium]
Soil, Time, Conditions.
Spring 2020. The only thing we have control of at the moment is our immediate environment. Caring for it. Manipulating it. Coaxing it into a form that makes us feel that we have mastery over it. Loads of people have taken to baking sourdough bread- relishing in the “magic” that happens when they grow their own sourdough starters. Others have dedicated themselves to perfecting dalgona coffee – the ‘magic coffee’ that you whip up into a semi-solid state. The common theme is that we are spending time working to transform common ingredients in our homes- flour, water, sugar, coffee- into an unexpected or surprising result.
I am in lockdown on my land. Apart from cultivated gardens immediately around our house, it is wild land. In the past – hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago – it had been terraced to grow olives. The terraces fell and were taken over by a thicket – bushes, shrubs, vines- within which live insects, spiders, scorpions, birds, snakes and through which wild boar roam. During the daytime, it is our land; at night, it is theirs. I am not welcome. I am a trespasser. There is no comfort out there, only terror.
I have taken soil, worked it into a shining, smooth, solid sphere over several days. I have magically transformed dirt into rock, then placed it back where it came from to show my mastery over it.
►AUDIO
► At Night (Infrathin)
4m 39s
2020
Sound experiment
►Audio pieces placed on the Echoes geolocation app for ‘Untitled Audio Exhibition’ with Elliot Jeffries and Dana McCarthy in 2020.
These are currently situated in and around the Tate Modern. You can only hear them by physically being in that space. Obviously, that isn’t easy at the moment (lockdown!), so I have made them available here. I wanted to create a contrast with the city by using sounds from the countryside. I experimented with narrative as well.
These are to be listened to with headphones as they are ‘3D sound’.
40 Days
1m36s
2020
Thunderstorm
1m51s
2020
Bees
2m03s
2020
► PRINT My son and I found a moth that had been attacked by a cat. It was huge. An Emperor Moth. Its wings were took broken to fly again. We put it in a box so it was safe from cats. We learned that they don’t eat and they only live for a few days. The next morning we saw that she had laid eggs in the box. We took them out and put them on leaves. A couple days later she died. We held a funeral for her and buried her next to the bird we found dead last summer. They graves each marked with a stick. Now we wait to see if her egss will hatch.
►3D SCANNING
This isn’t finished work. I’ve just beeen trying it out trying to think where it may lead. Here are just a few of my 3D scans.