Pallets, Soil, Plants, Electrical Components, Resin, Collages, Vegetable Dyed Fabric, 2020
August/2020- Altar for the Commons, The Fish Factory, Penryn
This installation deals with both the environmental and feminist issues around land use and food production.
Before the enclosures of the 16th century the poorest in society had access to common lands to grow their own plants for food, medicine and sale. For women especially, this was a vital resource, allowing an independant way to support themselves and their children, and a valuable place to build community away from the domestic space. When these lands were seized the women that revolted were persecuted as witches, alienating them from their connection to the land and the independence that this afforded them.
In modern times we’re still dealing with this fall out- we’re detached from the earth that provides us with components for our phones, and poison the land and water with intensive farming techniques, easily forgotten when grabbing branded products off a shelf. The bucolic green fields of Britain are deserts for biodiversity and soil quality. This work represents the need, in this time of environmental crisis, for women to reclaim our persecuted connection to nature and magic, and again revolt as witches.
This piece is an altar to a holistic use of nature: plants grown from kitchen waste usually thrown away; circles of fabric dyed with the same vegetables that created these seedlings, colours delicate and feminine like astrological bodies echoing our lunar relationship. Plinths of the altar are made from repurposed pallets from the farming industry, surrounded by a ritualistic circle of earth, with the metals and precious elements from our devices returned to their place of origin. ‘Witch Bottles’ mirror the growth within these plants, roots and wires stretching out inside resin, a protective spell in the fight to preserve our fragile environment.
Before the enclosures of the 16th century the poorest in society had access to common lands to grow their own plants for food, medicine and sale. For women especially, this was a vital resource, allowing an independant way to support themselves and their children, and a valuable place to build community away from the domestic space. When these lands were seized the women that revolted were persecuted as witches, alienating them from their connection to the land and the independence that this afforded them.
In modern times we’re still dealing with this fall out- we’re detached from the earth that provides us with components for our phones, and poison the land and water with intensive farming techniques, easily forgotten when grabbing branded products off a shelf. The bucolic green fields of Britain are deserts for biodiversity and soil quality. This work represents the need, in this time of environmental crisis, for women to reclaim our persecuted connection to nature and magic, and again revolt as witches.
This piece is an altar to a holistic use of nature: plants grown from kitchen waste usually thrown away; circles of fabric dyed with the same vegetables that created these seedlings, colours delicate and feminine like astrological bodies echoing our lunar relationship. Plinths of the altar are made from repurposed pallets from the farming industry, surrounded by a ritualistic circle of earth, with the metals and precious elements from our devices returned to their place of origin. ‘Witch Bottles’ mirror the growth within these plants, roots and wires stretching out inside resin, a protective spell in the fight to preserve our fragile environment.