We work and exhibit at my home in East London. Lastly, the work is photographed and added to the website.
All photography by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies
Emma Witter is our model and an artist
Website design by Karen Crane
The work is made from a variety of elements, often small shapes which on their own don't mean much but when clustered together become interesting. We have developed a language, a shorthand, to describe the different shapes that we use: shingle, weeds, etc.
Patina is very important as well and not something you can plan too carefully for, but there is great satisfaction when something brilliant and untoward happens. I am always aware of the organic nature of what we do, applauding the natural world that constantly does it better.
Sometimes a piece will come fully formed into my head, I see it in the space at the front of my brain above the eyes. Then it can be deconstructed into its component parts to see whether it is possible for it to work. It can take a long or short time and I can add to it, take away from it, see it from different angles. The picture is very clear and if I can't get it to settle as a workable piece, I know that it isn't right. This process is pleasurable but it needs a space of quiet around it to make it happen.
The story of Newfoundland
When Lucie started work here, I told her this story.
On the ferry from Cape Breton to Sydney I picked up a leaflet about a guesthouse in a lighthouse keeper’s cottage on a small island just off the coast. We arranged to meet the boatman on a jetty at the end of the world. We stood waiting for him with our luggage. He arrived in a wooden boat with high ends like a gondola. He was taciturn and said that we wouldn't be needing our bags. We put them back in the car and got into the boat. He didn't say anything else. I felt I had put my family at risk. It was unnerving. The sea was very choppy beyond the harbour but suddenly became completely golden and then we saw dolphins so close and whales in the distance. We disembarked onto rocks and he told us that we must walk for forty minutes across the island.
The land that we walked on was what I wanted to tell Lucie about. We walked across a fairytale that no one had ever walked across before, a lattice of black springy roots and branches supporting spongy moss and lichen and procumbent bushes pinned with cranberries and cloud berries.