Landshapes is an exploration of self-authenticity, a negotiation between body and landscape, memory and material, permanence and change. Rooted in personal experience, it captures the marks left by land on the body and the marks the body, in turn, leaves upon the land. Between North Wales and Leeds, where terrain shifts under time’s weight, I explore the dialogue between natural forces and human intervention, questioning ownership, imprint, and evolution.
Landscapes do not consent to being touched, altered, or built upon, yet we do it anyway. We carve roads into hills, shape cities from stone, impose function upon open spaces. The land does not decide how it should be used, nor does it control who claims it, who deems it useful, or who renders it obsolete. I see a parallel in the body, how it is shaped by external forces, defined by others, and assigned purpose without permission. Where does the body retain its own content, its own truth, separate from what the world imposes upon it? How does the landscape resist, and how does the body?
I hoard materials, fragments gathered from walks, from my childhood home, from buildings and spaces where lives once unfolded. Each object is a record of use, a residue of time. I do not throw them away. Instead, I store them, rework them, and embed them into new forms. Layered with paint and resin, these discarded materials become relics of a shifting world, repurposed into a narrative that questions what is kept, what is erased, and what is worth preserving.
The work is both visual and tactile, inviting physical interaction. Yet when is it acceptable to touch? Touch the land, touch the body, touch art? What are the boundaries between reverence and intrusion, between engagement and violation? The hardened resin encases what was once raw, protecting and obscuring. The textures beg to be felt yet remain resistant. The invitation is uncertain, the permission ambiguous.
By engaging with Landshapes, the viewer steps into this dialogue, between control and surrender, between the desire to touch and the awareness of limits. It is an act of immersion, a reflection on what is preserved and what is lost. The marks we leave, the spaces we claim, and the bodies we inhabit become part of a shared archive, where land and self are inextricably linked.
You have my consent, my body, my land, my home. But where do the boundaries truly lay?