Our lives are speeding up. Depression and anxiety are rising, screens are multiplying, and somewhere along the way we lost the ability to simply stop and notice the world around us.
This project starts with the Gower Peninsula. It has always been a place of peace for me, somewhere my family returned to every year, somewhere I learned to slow down and notice the small things. The texture of a rock. The crust of salt on weathered stone. The quiet persistence of the tide. Salt corrodes and preserves in equal measure. Iron rusts in the presence of salt. Copper oxidises and transforms over decades. These are slow processes that have been happening long before we were born and will continue long after. They are not metaphors. That is nature doing what it does, indifferent to our pace.
My work puts these processes at its centre. Each piece is presented as an artefact, something that has weathered the ocean and washed ashore carrying its history with it. Labels drawn from real Gower shipwreck records connect the work to a particular loss, an actual time, a specific place.
We are made of the same elements as the world around us: salt, iron, water. The sea is not separate from us. Slow down. Look closely. The details have been here all along.
The three core materials used throughout this project, each drawn from the natural and industrial history of the Gower coastline
Alum crystal growth on copper dyed devoré fabric
Victorian preserve jar submerged in saturated salt solution, active crystal formation ongoing
Large alum crystals on copper dyed digital embroidery fabric
Salt and iron flocking on silk organza, lightly rusted
Earthenware ginger beer bottles, iron embedded and wood fired with salt
Close up of iron flocking on silk organza, heavily rusted
Copper patina dyed devoré fabric
Copper oxide glaze on white stoneware ceramic
Close up of copper patina growth along the edge of acid etched copper panel
12 month placement at PriestmanGoode as a CMF Designer
