Sunreturn ’21 (Disarm)

This work is an assemblage of objects found while navigating the world. Individual things call out to me and I collect them: they have a resonance with my visual field, a conversation with my body. For this re-staging of ‘Gathering’ I explicitly wanted to dismantle my previous work and reconfigure it. My work wants to be mutable, able to be recycled, to escape the idea of the singular, to be process rather than fixity. A show in November is different to a show in May. I have thought about the sun as we transit through winter, how prehistoric peoples marked this time, how Cornish wayside crosses are themselves versions of prehistoric solar discs and how that symbolic language carries through into the symbols of protest, through pagan and occult ideas. The CND sign is a sad, drooping solar cross, the rune of death, ’Yr’ (the yew). Over the months since the last invocation of the exhibition I’ve changed and things have gathered around me in a different ways: new resonances, forms, anxieties and gratitudes. I’ve dismantled and bagged up bits of my previous work, entangled them with new and old findings, makings and symbols as a sentinel to see me through another winter. A different structure of significance. The things and feelings in it recycled and rearranged.

Cornish coppiced birch, cherry & hazel poles, pewter, paracord, shells, driftwood, iron, steel, copper, plastic, rope, string, fossils, paper, wood, onion, poppy heads, feathers, painted papier mâché.