09/11/2026 - Unearthing on Display

21st October 2026

Experimentation: Documentation and Display

This discussion focuses on working with the fabric pieces I collected from Danby this past August. As an artist, it's natural for me to explore further possibilities through experimentation. I believed that the interaction between the soil and the silver nitrate infused in the cotton pieces could reveal more.

To begin, I started scanning sections of the fabric using my flatbed scanner to capture high-resolution images of the marks and formations that had developed across the material surfaces. Looking closely at these scans, I began to consider the patterns, colour variations, formations and possible exchanges taking place between the fabric and the soil during their prolonged contact. However, unlike my soil chromatography prints, where particular patterns can be interpreted in relation to nutrients, vitality, proteins and human intervention, these fabric images are much more difficult to read. I have been unable to establish a clear relationship between the visual formations and the soil meter readings taken at each position. The numerical data does not appear to offer an obvious means of interpreting the marks. The fabric therefore remains, to an extent, unreadable and presents an interesting revelation within my practice. Soil chromatography provides a visual language that I can investigate and cross-reference against meter readings, these fabric pieces resist such straightforward interpretation. Rather than necessarily viewing this as a limitation, or as a failed experiment, I am beginning to consider whether this unreadable series forms an important part of the work, acknowledging that the soil does not always reveal itself through patterns that can be easily identified, measured or translated into a legible image.

I then began working the fabric pieces through the developer, hoping that this process might reveal a more dramatic response in the form of black and grey tones, as the developer reacts with the silver nitrate within the silver gelatin coating. Despite the time that had passed, I had anticipated a more pronounced change across the fabric surface. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and instead only subtle, slightly darker colourations appeared. This led me to consider whether, during the period between the fabric being unearthed and developed, the silver nitrate may have become inactive or ‘expired’, or whether the prolonged burial and the environmental conditions in situ had altered or diminished its chemical reactivity. Another possibility is that the silver gelatin mixture had not been applied heavily enough to the fabric, or that the solution was too diluted to produce a more substantial response. At this stage, I cannot determine which of these factors, if any, contributed to the limited results.

To bring the work towards its completion, I began considering the final stage of its process: moving the fabric from the landscape into the gallery space. If I consider the workflow as a sequence of actions, from cutting the fabric and soaking it in silver nitrate, to burying it and allowing it to be activated through its contact with the soil, before unearthing, developing and finally hanging it within a gallery, then the exhibition becomes the concluding stage of this durational piece. The work brings together photography, performance and sculpture, with each stage contributing to its material and conceptual development over time. I wanted to give the work a final place, presenting the soil and its traces in situ, but now outside of its natural environment, within a space where it could be encountered by an audience. In doing so, the gallery offers a way for others to experience aspects of the landscape without having been physically present with me on the Moors. The fabric carries evidence of its time there, holding traces of movement, decomposition, fragility, moisture, energy, micro-activity and colour. By bringing these materials into the gallery, I am interested in how an audience might encounter and interpret these traces, and whether the work can communicate something of the landscape and the processes that took place beneath its surface. The work within an exhibition setting therefore becomes more than simply the display of an object, it marks the final stage in a process shaped by duration, environmental conditions and material exchange, allowing the fabric to move from its buried, largely unseen existence into a shared space of observation and interpretation. The work as a whole recognises three positions of artistic practice, utilising photography, sculpture and installation. The work originates in a photographic process. I coat the fabric with silver gelatin, bury it and allow the material to encounter the soil over time. The resulting marks are not simply images I have photographed, they emerge through the material's contact with the environment. This raises questions about authorship, how much of the resulting image is determined by my decisions, and how much emerges from processes I cannot fully direct?

The fabric has a physical presence beyond the image it carries. Its weight, length, edges, texture and relationship to gravity become part of the work. Hanging the pieces allows the audience to encounter them as material objects occupying space, rather than viewing them only as photographic surfaces. The material is no longer simply a support to reveal an image, it becomes part of the image's meaning.

By exhibiting three vertical pieces together, I then establish a relationship between the individual materials, the gallery architecture and the audience's movement through the space. The distance between the works, their height, their alignment and the space surrounding them all influence how they are encountered. The installation is therefore not only the three pieces themselves, but also the spatial relationship created between them. it would be easy to say that my practice expands photography, moving into sculpture and installation whilst still recognising the traditional ideals of photography.

What interests me most is that the gallery presentation does not necessarily remove the landscape from the work, it creates a different way of encountering it. The soil remains physically present through its marks, colours, traces and patterns on the fabric, even though the landscape itself is no longer there. Although this placement within a traditional white clinical space creates a discourse around the removal of an object (soil) and restituting it within a human centric environment for viewing pleasure, what becomes the focus of the gallery experience is the soils presence and engagement with the hanging fabric. This idea of making the soil expressed through the fabric within a gallery brings about the notion of centerising the soil as the focal point, allowing the viewers to tune into the North Yorkshire landscape. There is also a change in orientation. The landscape is predominantly encountered horizontally. We walk across it, look out over it and move through it. By hanging the fabric vertically, I bring the landscape into a different visual perspective. The audience can stand in front of the work and examine the soil's traces at eye level, moving their attention across the surface rather than across the terrain. The fabric becomes a kind of intermediary between the landscape and the viewer. It carries evidence of a place, but it also presents that evidence in a new spatial and visual context.

This experimental research piece brings into question what does photography become when the image is produced through environmental contact, carried by a textile material and encountered as a spatial object. The fabric after all does not provide a complete or transparent representation of the soil, it records a particular encounter, under particular conditions, over a particular duration. It is just a experimental translation of the soil through an act of practice. The fabric images do not reveal everything about the soil, instead it offers a material trace through which the soil's activity might be encountered, contemplated on and questioned, acknowledging this is not the soil in its entirety.