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Tempered was a site-specific installation developed for Fabrica Gallery, Brighton, 18 April–31 May 1998. Hundreds of white turkey feathers were individually suspended on nylon thread within the central volume of the former church, above the North Balcony. Photographic transparencies were also installed within the grilles of the gallery floor.

The work grew from a series of experiments with feathers that I had been developing since autumn 1996, exploring their lightness, movement and suspension. These included enclosing feathers within transparent materials and a series of photographic experiments in the landscape.

At dawn on New Year's Day 1998, I staged a 'feather throw' at the Seven Sisters cliffs. Large quantities of white feathers were released from the clifftop while I attempted to photograph their descent from the beach below using a manual medium-format camera. Rather than falling directly, the feathers were caught by the uplift of the wind and carried upwards and outwards. The resulting photograph was blurred and failed to capture the extraordinary moment I had witnessed.

The installation at Fabrica developed partly from the memory of that event: an attempt to arrest the fleeting instant when hundreds of feathers appeared to hang in the air. Suspended individually through the gallery, the feathers transformed an ephemeral event into something spatial and still, while retaining a sense that they might begin moving again at any moment.

The photographic transparencies embedded within the floor showed feathers that had landed in rock pools at the foot of the Seven Sisters, connecting the installation back to the landscape and to the original action.

Fabrica's architecture became integral to the work. The height, stillness and former ecclesiastical function of the building amplified the associations carried by the white feathers, while their suspension introduced a theatrical and slightly unsettling quality into the space. At the time, I was particularly interested in Cornelia Parker's use of suspension and the way objects held in space could simultaneously suggest movement, stillness and an event that had already taken place.