Research
Here is a selection of my research activities since 2016 - the point where straight forward object making began to give way to installation, workshops and research.
The Land Settlement Association
2023~ongoing
This is where I was brought up. My parents were tenant growers for the LSA.
A large interwar land resettlement programme in the UK - a response to the depression and mass unemplyment of the early 20th C. They took over our ‘holding’ in 1970 and grew salad crops for market, along with the smallholders on the other 59 plots across the estate.
Terracotta Toll
2022~maybe pickupable
Linked to the research above is an ongoing exploration prompted by a story that my mum told me. Working prepping terracota pots for the Chelsea Flower Show in 1960, she told me that to tell which pots needed watering she would strike the pot with a wooden bobbin on a cane. In 2022 I began working with sound artists and collegues at Bath Spa University to listen in on the soily sounds of plants.
The Garden at Light.Birds.Hill
2022~tending forwards
The garden at light.birds.hill is a plot I’ve been tending slowly for a couple of years. I started off doing it with another Clare.
This year has been more purposeful - I’ve branched out of the 6.30am slot to garden when other humans are more commonly around. With the comfort of knowing that 6.30am will still be there.
Sometimes this doesnt go very well and people give me hugs I don’t want. But more often they give me lovely words and stories that I didn’t expect.
I’m trying to improve the soil with chop and drop and as far as possible I’m keeping organic matter within the site.
Light.Birds.Hill is a place to talk to passersby and/or be ignored.
It’s a straightforward-gardening-talk sort of place or a place to talk about climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. It’s a conversation with coke cans and other
Our council runs a nature neighbourhood scheme to invite residents to adopt verges - but you’re not allowed to plant shrubs or food. I think they just want pollinator plants (just the designated ones with the bee logo) or wildflowers. I’ve planted oak, rowan, gooseberries, sage, tayberry, raspberry, roses, foxgloves, teasels and other stuff. These are pollinator plants.
I’ve started on the verge across the path from this. The other day I found some pyramidal orchids - this made me very happy. By the afternoon the council had chopped them down. They didn’t have a bee logo on them. Its only moths and butterflies that pollinate these.
If you’ve read this far you must like plants -I’m glad you’re here.
The multi-species Notice(ing) Board
2024~the start of something
This was a session trailed by Charlie Tweed and me as part of the 2 day workshop we delivered for the BSU Portleven Residency. Working with the concept of a noticeboard - but imagining the notices are by/for/about our more than human kin- and thatincludes the matter and material of the board itself/theirselves.
Seeds & Expression
2024~all our futures
This is the beginnings of a seed saving, seed sharing, seedy knowledge project. inspired by the work of Alys Fowler and her four year parsnip, Vandana Shiva’s activism and the stories of swarms of squashes, grexes, landrace breeding programmes that liberate seeds from the limitations imposed on them under late stage capitalism and the extractive productivist drive.