How might movement become a shared cultural practice again?
The penultimate week of my two-month residency at Wigwell Lodge, supported by VOID Art Centre and The Ampersand Foundation, has revealed that this work is becoming less about making objects and more about remembering relationships.
As I approach the final weeks of my 100-day fieldwork, this residency has been integral in noticing the immutable transformations, from walking through forests of Derry-Londonderry, to carrying those intentions, materials and encounters into the studio. A time to pause, reflect, and filter ideas into the next stage of Future Foresting
Walking, carrying, squatting, writing and making have become a continuous practice, revealing how clay, bone, forests and minerals each record forces, conditions and traces of a particular time.
My research follows Mesolithic Forest cultures, from Mountsandel on the River Bann to Star Carr in Yorkshire, where movement, survival and relationships with the more-than-human world were inseparable. Archaeologist Graeme Warren suggests that many hunter-gatherer societies understood humans, animals and spirits as “co-inhabitants” rather than separate categories. That perspective continues to shape how I think with forests; not as landscapes we occupy, but as living systems we belong to.
The stones and clay I carried have shaped me as much as I shaped or carried these minerals.
Tree rings, soil chromatographies and the architecture of bone all reveal patterns of force, adaptation and time. They remind me that movement begins from the ground up: from earth, through the pelvis, into the spine. Listening becomes both practical and poetic as we imagine healthier relationships with ourselves, each other and the more-than-human world.
The work now returns to the studio, unfolding through sculpture, writing, collaboration and public participation towards a future exhibition next year.
Thank you to the team at VOID Art Centre, Sineàd for visiting and guiding the process, The Ampersand Foundation, Wigwell Lodge, and @Vivianacheccia for the conversations, trust and space that allowed this work to evolve.
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