My sculp­tur­al instal­la­tion enti­tled Por­tals (2024) is made out of the same earth­ly mate­r­i­al that forms the map’s infill. Sym­bol­ic of the man­made forms found in mine shafts, these del­i­cate, skin-like sculp­tures are digi­tised rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the bro­ken earth made man­i­fest, as 3D mod­els of under­ground sys­tems are trans­lat­ed back into phys­i­cal objects using fos­silised, organ­ic mat­ter from prehistory. 

The mate­r­i­al res­o­nance of these works form a phys­i­cal mark­er that brings the coal­fields of York­shire — and the thou­sands of dis­used shafts and out­crops that punc­ture this land­scape — to the fore through the slow-time his­to­ry of the earth itself. These works rep­re­sent the absences below ground in a way that reveals the myr­i­ad of con­nect­ed mate­r­i­al, social, cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic his­to­ries sit­u­at­ed deep beneath our feet. 

Also made man­i­fest in coal is the ouroboros snake, which I re-con­tex­tu­alise with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to indus­tri­al min­ing prac­tices that have shaped the post-indus­tri­al land­scapes of my home-coun­ty of York­shire. With­in the con­tem­po­rary con­text of cli­mate emer­gen­cies and mass extinc­tions, Self Destruc­tive Acts II (2024) repo­si­tions this ancient sym­bol of rebirth and uni­ty as a prophet­ic warn­ing, as the human race moves seem­ing­ly towards their own destruction.

Indeed, snakes fea­ture heav­i­ly in the work, as atem­po­ral crea­tures that slith­er through the under­worlds of many cul­tures, mytholo­gies, reli­gions and folk­lore. The stony heads of ser­pent stones are play­ful­ly returned inSnake­stones (Coal) I and II for exam­ple, and fea­ture in the dis­play case sit­u­at­ed in the cen­tre space exhi­bi­tion.

In my video work enti­tled Chan­nelling (To Dwell Under­neath the Ground) the snake, as the estab­lished guardian of the mines, is revered through an entan­gled and mate­ri­al­ly embed­ded rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Greek Mythol­o­gy, Eng­lish Folk­lore and the post-indus­tri­al land­scapes that I have encoun­tered through research under­tak­en at the Nation­al Coal Min­ing Muse­um in addi­tion to the Sedgwick. 

My ini­tial inter­est when encoun­ter­ing the archives of the Sedg­wick Muse­um lay upon fas­ci­nat­ing tales of dis­cov­ery. The thirst for knowl­edge exhib­it­ed by sci­en­tists such as Dar­win or Anning was enthralling. Yet, through­out my work, I also dis­play an ambiva­lence towards the his­to­ri­og­ra­phy of human dis­cov­er­ies, and the entan­gle­ment between explo­ration and exploita­tion, which is too rarely acknowledged. 

The recur­rence of the hand in the body of work pre­sent­ed at Ground­Work gallery is, for me, a way to nar­rate the human impli­ca­tion in extrac­tive prac­tices. The sym­bol­ic nature of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the hand alludes to and explores the realms of labour, dis­cov­er­ies, and equiv­o­cal acts of gen­eros­i­ty. In Volatile Com­pounds (Giv­ing or Tak­ing) (2024) — which is a work made of kaoli­n­ite porce­lain, a min­er­al sub­stance mined from the earth — a hand holds a dia­mond in a ges­ture that can be both under­stood as a gift or as a demon­stra­tion of wealth. The repli­ca of the crys­tal can also be per­ceived as a pen­du­lum, a spir­i­tu­al tool used to answer com­plex ques­tions, or to direct its own­er towards rich findings.

In Volatile Com­pounds (The Stain) (2024), a wax derived from the petro­le­um indus­try is used to cre­ate a hand that is seem­ing­ly dis­eased, and whose peel­ing skin has tak­en the col­oration of an oil spill; a taint that also match­es the radioac­tive land­scapes of my pho­to­graph­ic collages. 

The nefar­i­ous title of the work Volatile Com­pounds (The Con­spir­a­cy) (2024) invites us to imag­ine a con­ver­sa­tion between two bronze fin­gers which, like the hands, are anthro­poid sym­bols. Bronze is used in numer­ous pieces in my work. This alloy has been cho­sen because it pri­mar­i­ly con­sists of cop­per, whose indus­tri­al his­to­ry I came across on my first vis­it to the Sedg­wick Muse­um. The transocean­ic phe­nom­e­non of cop­per exploita­tion began in the ear­li­er part of the 19^th Cen­tu­ry in the Unit­ed King­dom, when smelt­ing tech­nol­o­gy in the coun­try start­ed to use coal-fired fur­naces, increas­ing the capac­i­ty and need to extract cop­per worldwide.Today, cop­per min­ing is still leav­ing its destruc­tive marks on both the envi­ron­ment and the health of its work­ers and neigh­bour­ing min­ing pop­u­la­tions, and its neg­a­tive colo­nial lega­cy is unde­ni­able. The works in bronze then invite us, as Dar­win did when he vis­it­ed Chilean cop­per mines, to mar­vel at human inge­nu­ity and to dream of the mag­i­cal pow­ers bestowed upon cop­per, but they also warn of the lure of cap­i­tal­ist enrich­ment and its exploita­tive nature. 

In Volatile Com­pounds (The Inver­sion) (2024), I ref­er­ence Sea­henge, a pre­his­toric mon­u­ment that includes a mag­nif­i­cent tree stump buried upside down on the Nor­folk shores. The pur­pose of this bronze age instal­la­tion has nev­er been deter­mined, but its benev­o­lent aura and its asso­ci­a­tion with death and decay are con­tra­dic­tions that appeal to me. 

The porce­lain and brass work Volatile Com­pounds (In Con­stant Motion) (2024) also refers to archival objects found in Nor­folk, in this instance, a Nebra Sky Disc, a bronze age plate used as both an astro­nom­i­cal instru­ment and an object of worship. 

With my ceram­ic work, I evoke ruined civil­i­sa­tions and fos­silised sea crea­tures, which I com­bine with ocean­ic and inter­plan­e­tary land­scapes. The work pro­pos­es a new nar­ra­tive akin to a beguil­ing myth. The pieces are all of pock­et sizes, as if reli­gious icons of an unknown belief system. 

The seduc­tive nature of my images and objects is posi­tioned as a lure to gen­er­ate dis­cus­sion, while putting to the fore­front his­tor­i­cal facts often ignored as well as prob­lem­at­ic remem­brances of the past. For me, the jux­ta­po­si­tion of cho­sen forms such as the hand and fin­gers, and mate­r­i­al such as wax, cop­per and Kaoli­n­ite is a crit­i­cal poet­ic ges­ture, a method which opens con­ver­sa­tions and makes it pos­si­ble to attempt to take a posi­tion towards the real by mod­i­fy­ing and rear­rang­ing the respec­tive posi­tions of dis­cours­es, objects and images.

In approach­ing archives, I begin with a con­fir­ma­tion bias, look­ing for arte­facts and pro­tag­o­nists that I can insert into this pre-exist­ing nar­ra­tive; that of the human on earth and their pas­sage through a his­to­ry punc­tu­at­ed by war and envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion. In this body of research I most close­ly focus on the Sedg­wick Club’s last expe­di­tion in Dol­w­eryn in 1914, before the dis­rup­tion of WW1, and I jux­ta­pose it with the Sval­bard Archive. War fea­tures strong­ly in my work, due to its dis­rup­tion to both humans and to the land­scapes it takes place in. But there is also a sense of tem­po­ral dis­rup­tion due to the trau­ma of war, and in this nar­ra­tive I pull fig­ures from these ear­ly expe­di­tions through these fis­sures that war opens up, drag­ging them again through the sec­ond world war to the post war expe­di­tions to Svalbard. 

In my draw­ings, I com­bine sources and lay­ers them into new nar­ra­tives. Here a rock for­ma­tion from a pho­to­graph from the Doly­w­ern expe­di­tion in 1914, hov­ers above a draw­ing of an imag­ined row of arc­tic peaks derived from a small draw­ing of fos­silised teeth in the Sedg­wick muse­um by Agosti­no Scil­la ( 1639 – 1700), one of the ear­li­est writ­ers on fos­sils. My prac­tice also includes ceram­ics, and my small paper clay bur­nished box­es rep­re­sent portable taber­na­cles in this pil­grim­age. These were inspired by a small leather case, which appeared repeat­ed­ly in Bri­an Harland’s films where it emerges, is con­cealed and re-emerges from the mouths of tents, and through rep­e­ti­tion becomes ritualistic. 

In the dis­play case and around the wall, ceram­ics and draw­ings punc­tu­ate this jour­ney and inter­act with Lucas’ Por­tals, as if these por­tals are punc­tur­ing time and allow­ing these sites and pil­grims to slip through. The pil­grims were devel­oped from the ear­ly Sedg­wick Club expe­di­tions, where pho­tog­ra­phers swathed in their cam­era hoods appear as appari­tions and shapeshifters on Welsh hill­sides. I imag­ine them on their slow and steady jour­ney towards the ice, pass­ing anoth­er sta­tion of the pil­grim­age — ​‘Sanc­to­ri­um’ — which emerges from a Doly­w­ern outcrop. 

The final stage of the jour­ney pulls the pil­grims through a gate­way of glac­i­ers (from the Sval­bard Archive), seem­ing­ly nes­tled in snow but baked by the fires of the kiln, brown and brit­tle and dry. 

My paint­ings of tents rep­re­sent the end of the jour­ney, the sup­posed trans­fig­u­ra­tion where the pil­grims reach their high­est point of enlight­en­ment. They are again tak­en from Bri­an Harland’s Sval­bard expe­di­tion films. In the films, silk tents bil­low in icy winds, and in the paint­ings they sit in flood­ed ground illu­mi­nat­ed and translu­cent. They are shrines to the land­scape, they are shrines to lost glac­i­ers and to the ice which pools around them. Fore­sight was not tak­en and illu­mi­na­tion comes too late.