I've been using clay now for the best part of 20 years.
Clay, especially porcelain, is highly symbolic in
talking about the fragility and strength of the natural world.
I'm interested in science fiction and fact, and especially the botanical world and other unseen
microorganisms, and the sense of the uncanny and the other worldliness.
A recent body of new work was entitled Radioactive Boglach, and this was a touring exhibition
of the UK, and this was embracing a sort of 'what-if' scenario. So what if long-term radiation
leakage were to happen in the environment, and what sort of organisms might result from this.
So this led to a nuclear inquiry and a general inquiry into our energy crisis.
And the V&A residency has been a fantastic platform to discuss my findings with the public.
One of the first things I did when I arrived here was
look at the collections, and search out the atomic at the V&A. And I found
a particularly beautiful Vase by Greta Marx which has a uranium glaze on it.
The V&A has an amazing collection of uranium glass and what was wonderful was that I was
able to discover this glass by walking around the collection late at night, and using a UV
torch to show how it fluoresces under UV light which was a wonderful experience.
One really important project I did here at the V&A was to engage local school children into making
architectural maquettes, which are markers for burial sites for the burial of spent nuclear fuel,
and I asked them the question: 'how would you warn future generations of the dangers of what's buried
there, when language we know now and symbols and signs that we know now do not exist'.
This method of burying nuclear waste is currently being built in places like Onkalo in Finland
and it involves the burial of copper canisters with spent nuclear fuel,
which is surrounded by a bentonite clay. I wanted to make sense of the scale of
engineering of this process, and the enormity of it by putting an installation into my space.
I started with a copper disk that was polished to resemble a top of a copper canister,
and then I surrounded the area with bentonite clay. Bentonite clay is
beautiful when it's mixed with water – it's really luxurious and lovely to work with.
I then waited to see what sort of cracks would form with the drying
out of the bentonite clay and this was quite a poetic process in talking about
how I feel how fragile bentonite clay is in this very important purpose. Unfortunately
because of lockdown this piece had to remain in my space unseen, eerily sat here.
At the start of lockdown I managed to slip into my pocket one tool that i could take away from
London. This I used to create a piece of work in total isolation in my Stroud studio. This is
entitled Dark Times and it's inspired by strange reports of morphological effects on Scots Pines
near Chernobyl, and Red Pines near Fukushima. Scientists can't agree exactly on why this is
happening. I intended to carry on this theme of dark times, poignant now in this current pandemic,
and to talk about the dangers of past present and future. I took this theme into the vitrine
for the latest display, and here we have the raven looking down accusingly at us.
In this anthropocene age, I think it's really important we continue to
question our use of the earth's natural resources for our own energy gains.
I feel like we're living in an age where science fiction is becoming fact,
and this isn't always a good thing, but it does continue to fuel my work.
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