Above: Abiotica (July 2019), installation at Paper Mountain, download catalogue.

For the Paper Mountain exhibition I begun to experiment with the mineral samples in solid sculptural form. In a 30cm x 30cm plywood frame, I took drill chips and mixed them with BondCrete, pollen, flower stamens and my own plastic waste and built up layers of colour creating artificial ‘strata’. Once the BondCrete set I drilled out a cylindrical core sample in the artificial strata. Adding pollen and flower stamens in the mix was my homage to the technique paleoclimatologists employ to build a picture of bygone ecosystems––whereby they analyse pollen trapped in strata or ice core to record changes in ecology over tens of thousands of years. Part irony, I titled the sculptures Future Strata (2019), and Future Core Sample (2019) pointing to what future geology might look like.

Above: Abiotica (May 2019), Quarter Gallery: drill chips from a reverse circulation (RC) geology drill rig with additional desert stones and sand.

Above: Film-still from the durational video: The Levitating Bushman (2019), click to view video.