On Thin Soil. Beech.

The layers of materials in this work come from the landscape of my daily walk. From the bedrock of chalk through human-generated deposits of brick, steel, concrete and plastic to the thin layer of soil, moss, beech tree and air. It references the ‘critical zone’ as defined by earth system scientists and explored politically by the late Bruno Latour. The zone, a few kilometres thick, between the lower atmosphere and the upper bedrock, in which life on earth occurs. The beech sapling was ‘rescued’ during Covid lockdown from where it had seeded in the path of recreational 4 x 4 vehicles. It is now over 2 years old and growing on thin soil over a layer of plastic waste found in the same spot. It represents that fragile proportion of biomass to human-generated deposits (1:10) that is present in an average square metre of the Earth’s surface (Jan Zalasiewicz Anthropocene Square Meter). The work was first photographed whilst installed at The Evelyn Borelli Garden of Rest Sculpture Park, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. It was installed for a second time in 2023 at Little Forest Land Art where it was awarded first prize in their Open Competition.