Dreaming Dobson's Dream

Site-responsive installation, Cheeseburn Sculpture Gardens, 2020–2021

Dreaming Dobson’s Dream developed as a continuation of my earlier residency at Cheeseburn Sculpture Gardens. Returning to the site a year later, I encountered drawings that had remained embedded in the landscape, altered by weather, decay and the passage of time. Rather than retrieving or restoring these works, I allowed their transformation to become part of the ongoing process of the artwork.

New drawings and installations were introduced in response to both the altered works and the surrounding landscape. The central piece, Dreaming Dobson’s Dream, was inspired by John Varley’s painting Dobson’s Dream, which depicts the architect John Dobson, designer of Cheeseburn Grange. The work reflects on ideas of architectural imagination, legacy and the relationship between human intention and the forces that reshape what we create.

By returning to drawings changed by exposure and time, the project explored making as an ongoing exchange between artist, material and place. The work developed through accumulation rather than completion, allowing historical reference, weathering and environmental processes to determine its evolution.

This second phase extended my exploration of drawing as a practice of return, one in which meaning emerges through duration, attention and material change.