Extinct in the Wild (In Loving Memory), 2025.
'In Loving Memory, juxtaposes vulnerability, loss, and grief in the natural world, the extinction of assessed species of plants, and the threats to both the habitat and ecology of these biodiverse systems; this project pays an emotional tribute to the eco-problem; curls of lead act as funerary items, (a swarf bi-product from cutting lead with tin-snips), they scatter across the names of the departed extinct species of plants, obscuring their memory.
The mining, harvesting, and energy usage, required to produce lead, archival greyboard, digital printing, and concrete, should remind us of the damage done; the poisoning and physical disruption of the planet, animal life forms, and plants.
In quiet reverence, the digital typographic layout depicting extinct plant names is printed on soft heavy greyboard, which offers a cushioning quality against the harsh concrete surface. The epitaph 'Sit tibi terra levis', ('May the earth weigh lightly upon you'), pays an emotional tribute to 'In Loving Memory', through material and structural translation.
Groundwork for this project has entailed gathering information from online resources to assess threatened plant species; Royal Horticultural Society, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, or the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Red List of Threatened Species data.
The project focuses visual and physical links between research and art; as understood through the words of Emanuele Coccia, Donna J Haraway, and John Hejduk, among many others.
Extinct in the Wild (R.I.P.), 2025.
‘R.I.P.’, presents nine concrete blocks, covered with a protective layer of thick archival greyboard; each gravestone structure supports a lead 'blade like' plant label, inscribed with its own Latin plant name; silently they all ask questions, each with their own story.
Groundwork to asses and gather information of threatened plant species has been greatly assisted by The Royal Horticultural Society, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Red List of Threatened Species data; research forms an essential catalyst to studio procedure, prompting a flux of language, and materiality.
Extinct in the Wild (R.I.P.), 2025, juxtaposes vulnerability, loss, and grief in the natural world, the extinction of assessed species of plants, and the threats to both the habitat and ecology of these biodiverse systems; 'R.I.P.' pays an emotional tribute to the eco-problem.
Extinct in the Wild (The Idea of Absence), 2025.
Both loss, and grief, inhabit the concept of 'Extinct in the Wild (The Idea of Absence.), 2025'; the epitaph 'Sit tibi terra levis', ('May the earth weigh lightly upon you'), inspired an impression of 'shroud', which in turn paved the way to an emotional tribute by means of structural translation through language and material.
'The Idea of Absence' inhabits the conceptual territory of a broken system; printed text provides a list of coded symbols, (hexadecimal characters derived from the redacted Latin names of extinct plants), as a pictorial trope the work expresses the outcome of natural language, translated to its computer coded other; in principal the 'shroud' provides a protective veil.