I am Rock

Forthcoming practice-led PhD project, Newcastle University, 2026–

I Am Rock is an ongoing practice-led research project exploring what becomes possible when an artist commits to sustained attention towards a single geological presence.

The project centres on a limestone rock from the Great Limestone formation of the North Pennines. Through walking, drawing, printmaking, photography and installation, I will return to this one geological entity over several years, allowing the rock and its changing surroundings to shape the pace, methods and direction of the work.

The project asks how artistic practice might develop different ways of understanding geological time, material presence and our relationships with the more-than-human world.

I begin this research through a funded practice-led PhD at Newcastle University, where I will explore how sustained creative attention can challenge the idea of stone as passive material and instead approach geology as an active presence within place.