This is the first installation I created while living in London. During my whole time at Goldsmiths, I worked by the edge of Deptford Creek, which is a tributary of the Thames. Both the Thames and Deptford Creek are tidal rivers with banks visible half the day or so which hold scraps from generations of London history. This area of London was also a shipbuilding yard in previous times with mariners such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh setting out or landing there.
This history felt quite heavy and deep in the bones of the area. It also felt like it was part of a much wider story of British identity shaped by the forces of maritime exploration, conquest, colonialism and its foreseen and unforeseen consequences.
Throughout my time at Goldsmiths, I was trying to sort some of this out and to parse out how I was wrapped up in these dynamics of migration and the shifting currents of power within London, along the Thames.
Like many of my works, I tried to articulate my ideas through a careful selection of materials and processes which felt like collaborators in the dynamics I was looking at. In walks along the riverbanks, I came across the crumbling, water softened bricks which I would use throughout my MFA and used them with as an addition to paint which I used in the work directly in the center of the first photo. Butterfly bush, a plant that dominates the urban landscape in much of Britain has also been a main feature of my work. Butterfly bush grows well in the cracks in mortar and in rocky soil such as what's found along train lines. It inhabits the liminal spaces that people neglect because they are inaccessible.
Throughout this installation, I use the sail and the crosses of the British flag as visual anchors to help point to the context outlined above.