This body of work Ground Truths was made as part of a group exhibition faethm curated by Amy Carter Gordon and Lauren McConnell. The exhibition was developed as a partnership between Opus independents and Sheffield Hallam University as part of the River Don project.
The emphasis of the project is to explore the possibility for animals and plants mountains, rivers or entire ecosystems to have their own legal personhood, so that this would help protect and enhance them in the same way that human rights protect people.
The artworks formed part of sensing and data collecting for the River Don Project. y works consisted of a three screen 16m video installation made in collaboration with Rob Gawthrop alongside six furled photographic prints pictured below - film works in the background.
The exhibition is reviewed in Corridor 8.
The work and research was presented at the Sustainable Photography? conference, Falmouth July 2025.
The project prompted a reflection on history, ecology, politics, and legal status. It evoked thoughts on economies, trade routes, the industrial revolution, migration, and the legal positioning not only of the river itself but also of the communities of travellers and asylum seekers that live alongside the river, or ravers that party on the banks.
This body of work captured and created images and 16mm films from the river silt, fig leaves, cow parsley, and the traces of a NYE rave on the edge of the River Don that flows through Sheffield. Phenols from the dried leaves of the mature fig trees that grow alongside the river's edge were used to develop images of themselves. The fig trees owe their existence to fig seeds carried in the sewage, the warmer water, heated by the steel industry’s historical use of the river to cool metals, created the conditions for the seeds to germinate, resulting in trees that are over 60 years. The fig trees of the River Don are the only alien plant species that have been given protected species status in the UK.
I used my residual analogue film stock in the studio that was predominantly 20 – 30 years old, and revived old photography and 16mm film cameras. Analogue processes demand time, as does experimentation, the opportunity to fail, try again, change tack, rework and work up. These creative processes often feel out of sync with the rapid pace of contemporary life, where time is scarce, the space to create is increasingly constrained, and our lives demand the immediacy (and opportunities) of digital media.