As an artist and a geologist, I’m interested in exploring how landscapes are shaped and how they respond to human behaviour. Diagenesis examines elements of the environment in and around Exmoor; an incredibly beautiful and dramatic landscape that has been subject to human influence for many thousands of years.
In order to create the images for Diagenesis, I made a series of conventional photographic prints and then folded them into complex three-dimensional forms via an intricate studio-based process. The folds exert an unnatural level of control over the scene, contorting it and re-shaping it, until it becomes something else entirely. The folded objects represent human interventions on the environment. But by returning the forms to the landscape, they are subjected to unpredictable natural forces and that human control is inevitably diminished.
Working on this project turned out to be an unexpectedly intimate and cathartic process that drew on my own obsessions and anxieties, while also embracing my desire to relinquish unnecessary control. Consequently, the project took on a performative aspect, whereby the resulting images also convey my personal experience of being outdoors and enjoying an increasing sense of freedom. The tactile nature of the project emphasises the connections between human, object, landscape and natural processes.
Ultimately, Diagenesis explores the relationship between humans and the environment, using myself as both a metaphor and a catalyst.
