Intervention: Change Over Time

This collection brings together images of a single post top, taken over a number of years. The title of each piece identifies the groyne number and the years in which the post top was photographed. The sets of posts and planking running down the beach to the sea are an intervention in a dynamic system. They stand in the flow of sea and shingle and change the way it moves. Eddies of shingle build against them, flow over them and are battered against them by the sea. Each post top is a uniquely identifiable element in this system which I have observed, recorded and compared over the years. The post tops, like portraits of a person repeated throughout their life, are not only ever changing and beautiful, but also provide clues as to the environment in which they live. There is often a tendency to hold on to the idea of permanence and not recognise change that happens gradually over an extended period of time. Gradual change, often unobserved is a core element of this work and acknowledges how the `natural' world is changed in a managed environment and provides a perspective of change and the requirement to maintain an intervention in a dynamic system. This work records the necessary tenacity of life and any structure on the beach in the intertidal zone, the dynamics of changing systems and the impact of coastal management.