UMBILICAL: Somewhere In Between

 

A journey along the A303, first made in my dad's blue Triumph Herald with its distinctive white racing stripes, became the starting point for this body of work. My practice is inspired by both urban and natural environments, connected by an invisible umbilical cord. Having spent my life with one foot in the city and the other on the coast, time, place, and movement have become central themes, echoing the constant ebb and flow of the tide.

 

The Umbilical series began with a commission from Sandra Higgins Art: Plantation ST 1740 07 10, created for Paradise Found at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, in 2022. The exhibition invited 36 artists to respond to the work of an allocated member of The Camden Town Group. I was paired with Robert Bevan, whose early twentieth-century landscape paintings became the catalyst for this project.

 

The Plantation series was developed using precise Ordnance Survey coordinates alongside Robert Bevan's painting: The Plantation (c.1900). Access to the original location on foot was impossible, so I took to the skies with the help of my friend Mike King and his Ikarus C42 aircraft. Flying above the site provided a completely new perspective on Bevan's much-loved landscape. As we circled the area, I photographed the terrain from multiple angles-90°, 180°, -90°, and full 360° rotations capturing both the landscape and its surrounding environment from above.

 

A year after the original commission, I instinctively returned to the work, expanding the series with a renewed focus on the Blackdown Hills. Introducing layers of colour, I explored the natural patchwork created by the landscape: fields, lanes, footpaths, roads, hedgerows, woodland, and built structures. These additions led to three new bodies of work within the Umbilical series: Seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) and Summertime I-III.

 

Alongside these works, I developed a piece inspired by the visual language of Ordnance Survey maps, using the 180° aerial viewpoint as its starting point. Three printing plates were each printed twice, with one impression from each plate rotated by 180 degrees. The resulting six prints were assembled into a repeating composition that evokes the sensation of endlessly circling above the landscape -like a bird riding the thermals -revealing shifting perspectives while remaining tethered to the same place.