Sweepings

Sweepings is a site-responsive installation developed for the Touchlines exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills. The work explores the increasingly blurred boundary between the natural and the synthetic through materials that are gathered, discarded and transformed.

At its centre are discarded shoelaces, melted and fused with Yorkshire stone, South Downs chalk and locally gathered heather. These materials reference the emergence of plastistones and the growing presence of microplastics within soils, waterways and ecological systems. Once associated with movement, repair and everyday use, the shoelaces become geological agents, binding organic and inorganic matter into unstable material formations.

The installation also incorporates an oversized broom constructed from locally gathered heather and imported palm fibres. Traditionally associated with care, maintenance and renewal, the broom becomes a symbolic and ultimately futile tool. It gestures towards attempts to clean, restore and manage environments increasingly saturated with synthetic residues that cannot simply be swept away.

Presented within a former textile mill, Sweepings reflects on cycles of production, consumption and waste. The work considers how petrochemical materials have become embedded within contemporary landscapes, challenging distinctions between nature and manufacture. Through acts of accumulation, binding and sweeping, it draws attention to the enduring and often invisible traces of human activity within ecological systems.