Little Things

Some works from my latest series. From left to right:

-Dried agapanthis flower head, with insect legs embedded in to a coating of latex around its core.

-Dead cicada, embedded in an acorn hat with latex.

-Giant New Zealand moth wing fragments, embedded in to an acorn hat with latex.

-Glass vial with dried organic matter within it (I placed some seeds in the vial with some water and left it forgotten in a drawer for two months, in which time small plants grew and died).





In this series I'm collecting small objects from the urban environment (both man-made and nature-made) and trying to combine these in a way that infuses them with some sort of sense of mystery and wonder, and brings awareness to the environment around us (and how little we really understand of it). I want to acknowledge these tiny objects, which are present in our everyday lives but so frequently overlooked.

I'm playing with traditional conventions of museum collecting and display (not so clear in this image- I'm trying to decide how best to present the body of work as a whole at their exhibition in a couple of months time) in combination with more mythical sides to human belief- myth and legend, and spiritual beliefs surrounding small objects such as jewellery and talismans from ancient cultures.