Back to the landscape

A journey from deep-time. This lump of clay has returned from where it came. Manipulated and reimagined as a narrative of its history. Quarry Man resides with quiet authority, emerging from an exposed seam of its origin, as if trying to escape the pressure of the time. He gazes over the extracted land beneath, a land void of the the gravels and sands that the ancient mighty Thames brought from the West, the gravels taken in a quest for progress. This vast sink hole in the landscape now filled with water inviting new life.
Quarry Man is a migrant. Dumped here, from the North by the forces of nature. The slow power of ice, picked up his DNA, bit by bit, on its route South, then warming climates dumped him here, hidden and forgotten - hibernating.
Woken by the arm of the excavator, shifted, pushed and exposed. I took a lump of this geological cake mixt and gave it form. Nature gave me the words to sculpt a poem.  

This work is the result of spending time exploring and immersing myself into the landscape of the quarry. I shall return to see how long it takes for Quarry Man to erode back into the Earth. I'm not sure how long this will take, but he is on a very exposed elevated position. This chalky boulder clay face will be removed within the year anyway, for the next phase of excavation, so it will be interesting to see if he lasts till then. In the meantime, I am working on an exciting project with finds from the current Thames.