Forrest: Wake this Ground - Arnolfini Gallery
09 July - 02 October 2022
The Night Books burning forests
2020 -2022
The Night Books are a reflection on the months of lock downs; of fearful sleep and the terrible fear that my species cannot respond to, or accept, the changes needed in the relationship between us and nature. The work is a development of my involvement with ‘Two Minutes to Midnight’, an ecological research group based in Paris. The Night Books, made of text, coal dust, charcoal and pigment, are books of carbon that may be seen as a human-induced layer of our geology.
One hundred and nineteen books make up Night Books and were constructed from almost two thousand separate leaves of hand-cast paper. The process began by shredding copies of a newspaper I published in 2006 ‘From my garden; being human in the Anthropocean Era.’
The shredded texts were combined with coal dust, pigment and crushed charcoal and then cast individually as a paper leaf. Once each book had been assembled it was further carbonised by burning the edges.
The processes of making the work, shredding, crushing, filtering, casting, drying and pressing prompted a sustained reflection on us and nature. It was a reflection that, inevitably, included thoughts and experiences of the pandemic. The activity of burning the edges of each book was a ritual that not only brought out the distinct colour of each work but also closed the process.
Punctuating the slow processes of the work were startling and terrible images of forest fires raging around the earth. Every fire reported was disturbing, filling me with frustration and gloom. I began to associate the roar of these fires with the roar of coals being burnt in power stations and homes. It felt like a conflagration of both our forests and our social structures; a burning of our ecology of values.
The Night Books evolved as memorial; an archive of our dying days, a forest of our making.; language from the cores
