Fragile Earth

This body of work is a development of work created at an Art Residency at Big Ci in Australia, which became a response to the bushfires of 2019/20.

The working title of this work was originally 'Disintegration/Things Fall Apart', and I was very pleased to receive funding from Arts Council England, which gave me time for experimentation and refection. The initial title summed up how I was feeling, mostly about the state of the environmental catastrophe which faces us, but also about covid and lockdown and how we could face all these issues as a global society. However as I progressed I began to think 'Fragile Earth' was a better description as it gave a little more room for optimism - the white ephemeral pieces evoking natural forms may either be seen as ghostly reminders of what we once had but have now lost, or more positively, as beautiful, fragile ecosystems which we still have a chance to save if we work together to do so.

Studio photography by John Melville