Votive Agriculture
2026
Plaster cast celery sticks
Set of 5, installation dimensions variable
2026
Plaster cast celery sticks
Set of 5, installation dimensions variable
Conceived during a visit to Little Woolden Moss with artist/filmmaker Nick Jordan and Lancashire Wildlife Trust. Nick and I are producing a film about the social history and ecology of the mossland, while it is in the process of being re-wilded.
I temporarily installed various sun-dial compasses upon the peat mossland in West Manchester. In the 19th century my forebears migrated to this landscape for work, making it arable and productive, and draining the ancient bogs of water, sphagnum moss and peat to grow market vegetables includ ing celery. Responding to the landscape, in communion with my departed forebears, I staked out three plaster cast sticks of celery at intervals to create sun dials which cast shadows that indicate the direction of North.
The notion that rural places are thresholds between states of permanence and impermanence, that can be occupied through artistic intervention, is evidenced in sculptural artefacts of this performance. Peat accumulates in the bog by 1mm every year, so by submerging the plaster casts in the bog by 27mm I metaphorically travelled to the year of my birth, before rewilding efforts began on the bog. Satirizing the stature of a doric column with ribbed, white sticks of celery, I investigate the dichotomy between a real ecologically complex site and the archetypal place of the farm, abundant with rows of vegetables and green grass.
I temporarily installed various sun-dial compasses upon the peat mossland in West Manchester. In the 19th century my forebears migrated to this landscape for work, making it arable and productive, and draining the ancient bogs of water, sphagnum moss and peat to grow market vegetables includ ing celery. Responding to the landscape, in communion with my departed forebears, I staked out three plaster cast sticks of celery at intervals to create sun dials which cast shadows that indicate the direction of North.
The notion that rural places are thresholds between states of permanence and impermanence, that can be occupied through artistic intervention, is evidenced in sculptural artefacts of this performance. Peat accumulates in the bog by 1mm every year, so by submerging the plaster casts in the bog by 27mm I metaphorically travelled to the year of my birth, before rewilding efforts began on the bog. Satirizing the stature of a doric column with ribbed, white sticks of celery, I investigate the dichotomy between a real ecologically complex site and the archetypal place of the farm, abundant with rows of vegetables and green grass.
Photo credits Nick Jordan