In-and-Out House

Installation.  Soil, sticks.  600 x 210 cms.  Laid flat on the earth in a section of mixed forest.

As a site-specific installation, this work is both transient and temporal.  It uses materials found in the forest where it is situated.  The plan of a house forms the basis for the image through which reference is made to space defined and delineated as a place or area of occupation/habitation.  As ‘home’, this space becomes a focus of identity.  The area is marked and demarked.  Identity with a place is not dependant on stringent definitions or boundaries.

Mud is used in this work in a painterly manner and is affect by the elements – it is applied with a trowel and left to dry and crack in the wind.   Colour is supplied by the materials, the mud, the moss, the different stages of rot, the different wood of the trees and of course the sunlight.  The dappled light of the forest – sometimes here, sometimes there, creates movement and change.  Identity with a place is not dependant on stringent definitions or boundaries, it is a state of flux, forever changing, forever being reassessed, always affected by external forces.