My work is about the collection, use and preservation of light and how light connects us directly to the past through space.
I am the first person to record starlight directly onto photopaper using telescopes situated in Dartmoor, UK (a recognised dark sky site) – The average ‘age’ of the photons captured and made permanent this way is between 5000 and 25,000 years.
I have created two new processes, the ‘Astrogram’ (prints made from pure starlight) and ‘Lunargram’ (prints made in pure moonlight)
My processes allow viewers to directly connect with ‘deep time’ in a real and tangible manner via 2 and 3-dimensional practice.
Viewers can contemplate 2-dimensional colour spaces revealed from light that has travelled thousands of years before being made permanent and visible.
My 3-D practice is about the ‘materiality of time’. By using materials, such as extinct bog oak and Mesolithic flint, I present the viewer with a ‘cosmic archaeology’ that unites an object’s age (in earth years) with captured time (in light years) as written on a tangible paper surface.
By creating new processes and re-presenting materials this way, I capture and preserve a tiny slice of space and time from within the enormity of the known universe.