Grace Emily Manning
Artist
About
︎
Grace Emily Manning
Artist
About
︎
Projects for Landscapes
Golden Valley, Herefordshire The Golden Valley Sundial Project
Cerne Abbas, Dorset Consequences - Radical Ritual
Consequences Workshops
Birmingham & The Black Country
Alders of Woodbrook
The Walsall Camel Sanctum Cloth
Sanctum of The One Eyed Toad with General Public
The Birmingham Allotment Project
TBAP Dye Process
Swanscombe Marshes, Thames Estuary, Kent
Swansula
Swansula Quartz
Relics of Estuarine Magic
Swansula Sail
Muggins
Brownfield Sister
Flint Instrument - Sum Of All It’s Past
Plastic Bone
LUNMES 2045
Padstow, Cornwall
The Tales of Cetus
The Plastic Age
Ghost Gear Poppets
Cetus Belly Of The Whale
Glastonbury, Somerset Wildflower of Avalon
Red List Mother
The Park Macrame
Installation
Choose Love - The Light WithinKite Spirit and
The Patchwork
Storytelling Quilt with
Sita Brahmachari
Drawing
Drawings, 1Drawings, 2
Concept / Technical
Painting
Blue Nacres in MoonlightIris 1,2
Overview
Cultures
Untitleds
Moving Image
RoseTale of Pupa
White Moths
Inside Tide
Embodying Voice
Central Vessel
Patchwork Storytelling
Project
Worry Angels
The Art of Transatlantic
Inclusion
GEM Eco Studio
A material studio working with plant, pigment and placeNatural dyes · Art materials · Workshops · Commissions
Design by Colour/Format
Photography by Natalie Jolley during presentation at Hellens Manor in Herefordshire
Welcome to Cobland
The Golden Valley Sundial Project in collaboration with artist Chris Poolman, commissioned by Meadow Arts as part of Our Place Golden Valley
Consequences by Radical Ritual
“A MONUMENTAL NEW GIANT HAS RISEN FROM THE IMAGINATION
OF OVER 200 PEOPLE FROM SOMERSET AND DORSET.
As featured on the BBC and The Guardian. “Co-created from landscape, story and ritual, the Radical Ritual Consequences Giant stood alongside the Cerne Abbas Giant – a powerful new figure woven from the creativity of community.”
A Nature Calling commission, produced by Activate Arts and Dorset National Landscapes.
As lead artist on the Consequences Project, I collaborated closely with artistic director Becca Gill from the very beginning; imagining giants, climbing hills, and finding creative solutions to the giant-scale challenges of fabricating the final artwork. I developed the framework for the piece through a digital collage, co-devised creative workshops with award-winning children’s author Sita Brahmachari, and made natural art materials from the local landscape for participants to use during the workshops.
Consequences Workshops
Cerne Abbas, Dorset
May 2025
For Radical Ritual’s Consequences workshops, I created natural art materials from local flora and earth pigments. With Yeovil-based Fairmead School, Able to Achieve, Together Yeovil, and Birchfield Primary, I made drawing charcoal from hazel, gorse, bramble, willow, and driftwood. We also carefully gathered chalk from the footpath across Giant Hill, which the groups ground down and mixed with tree sap to make paint.
Alders of Woodbrook
Ongoing exploration into Woodbrook Selly Oak, the landscape behind my house in Birmingham.
Drawing Alder tree spirits, creative narratives and experimenting in drawing with alder cone ink, alder catkin pollen, iron and citric acid.
The Walsall Camel Sanctum Cloth
Earthbound, 2024 The New Art Gallery Walsall
“Manning has worked in collaboration with General Public to create two fabric banners or temple cloths that hang alongside The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad and a further banner for the Gallery’s street-facing Window Box. The temple cloths are hand dyed using the plant, buddleia, also known as the butterfly bush, which has been harvested only metres away from the Gallery, encouraging us to notice the nature on our very doorsteps. The motif Manning has chosen to use is a drawing of a camel, which was created by Mud Club participant Tammy Hawkins. The camel can be seen as symbolic of resilience and endurance within the context of troubling times and changing climates.”
The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad (& other Spirit Animals of Walsall)
The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad (& other Spirit Animals of Walsall), General Public - Chris Poolman in collaboration with Grace Emily Manning, 2024
Earthbound, The New Art Gallery Walsall. Photography by David Rowan.
The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad was developed during a long-term residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall during which artist Chris Poolman explored natural building techniques to create a series of specially commissioned sculptures. The central sculptural work is inspired by the earthwork architecture of Britzer Garten, Berlin,which houses a clay village created by children and their families and 1970s adventure playground projects in Birmingham by former playworker Dave Swingle. Working with the Tuesday Women’s Group from Caldmore Community Garden (Mud Club),clay relief panels were co-produced, celebrating animals,both real and mythical, that have particular significancefor individuals and groups from the local community.
Grace Emily Manning created two large scale fabric banners / temple cloths (dyed with locally sourced buddleia) that hang alongside The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad and a further banner for the Gallery’s street-facing Window Box.
The Birmingham Allotment Project
‘Wotta Lotta Culture’
An exhibition by General Public
The Library of Birmingham, 2023
For a bespoke natural dye commission, I designed patchwork pillar wraps and cloth for display cases dyed with heritage dye plants grown on Birmingham allotments.
Upcycling woolen blankets dyed with rhubarb root, rhubarb leaf and celtic woad in response to the project’s colours designed by Keith Dodds.
Swansula Sail, 2023
150 x 160 cm
Wool, Iron, reed, buddleia, driftwood, found rope,
found plastic, flint
Materials from Swanscombe Marshes.
A sail map of Swansula for sailing the subconscious, out the Estuary to the North Seas.
The image on the sail is a map of Swanscombe Peninsula with the River Thames drawn in iron. The top of the sail points west towards the setting sun and the bottom points east to the rising sun.
The peninsula now takes the form of mother nature's breast. The fantasy land of Swansula exists on the landscape but in the future and on an altered plane of existence. The map of Swansula is a way of rooting the fantasy vessel to home during voyages in otherworlds and during lucid dreams.
Swansula Sail weaves in the local area's Viking history. Connecting to a time where longships and Viking settlements lined the Thames Estuary. The emblem for Greenhithe and Swanscombe town council is a Viking dragonship, illustrating how much this past established the sea faring identity of the area.
Swansula Sail is made of wool, a common sail material choice for the Vikings, dyed with two of the landscape's most abundant materials, reeds and buddleia collected from the marshes. The sail is infused with their virtues. Reeds are symbolic of a human soul, the power of the wind, protection, love and family. Buddleia represents resilience, rebirth and resurrection.
Swansula Sail and Muggins were made over seven days of the Autumn Equinox.
150 x 160 cm
Wool, Iron, reed, buddleia, driftwood, found rope,
found plastic, flint
Materials from Swanscombe Marshes.
A sail map of Swansula for sailing the subconscious, out the Estuary to the North Seas.
The image on the sail is a map of Swanscombe Peninsula with the River Thames drawn in iron. The top of the sail points west towards the setting sun and the bottom points east to the rising sun.
The peninsula now takes the form of mother nature's breast. The fantasy land of Swansula exists on the landscape but in the future and on an altered plane of existence. The map of Swansula is a way of rooting the fantasy vessel to home during voyages in otherworlds and during lucid dreams.
Swansula Sail weaves in the local area's Viking history. Connecting to a time where longships and Viking settlements lined the Thames Estuary. The emblem for Greenhithe and Swanscombe town council is a Viking dragonship, illustrating how much this past established the sea faring identity of the area.
Swansula Sail is made of wool, a common sail material choice for the Vikings, dyed with two of the landscape's most abundant materials, reeds and buddleia collected from the marshes. The sail is infused with their virtues. Reeds are symbolic of a human soul, the power of the wind, protection, love and family. Buddleia represents resilience, rebirth and resurrection.
Swansula Sail and Muggins were made over seven days of the Autumn Equinox.
Reed Spirit
60 x 30 cm
Found plastic, iron, reed
Muggins, 2023
180 x 200 cm
Wool, Mugwort
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) from Swanscombe Peninsula in North West Kent.
Swansula in a state of dreaming.
The edges of Swanscombe Marshes are prolific with Mugwort. Protecting its nature and holding the site in a space of dreaming.
In Swansula fiction Mugwort is harvested at the beginning of Autumn and is formed into a figure, a Muggins.
A Muggins made over the Autumn Equinox is burnt during the Spring Equinox to release prophecies and knowledge gained over a deep winter's sleep as new fertile energy.
The Muggins is visited over winter by the community who gather round for collective dreaming, clipping pieces of Mugwort to infuse, smoke or digest.
A woolen blanket is infused with the virtues of Mugwort to hold the Muggins in dream space. Dyed with the herb's leaves, steam and flower heads.
The Swansula Muggins dream of a common future for the land that best benefits local people and wildlife. Repelling negative influences such as profit driven developments and any private land ownership that threatens its nature.
Both Swansula Sail and Muggins were made over seven days of the Autumn Equinox.
180 x 200 cm
Wool, Mugwort
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) from Swanscombe Peninsula in North West Kent.
Swansula in a state of dreaming.
The edges of Swanscombe Marshes are prolific with Mugwort. Protecting its nature and holding the site in a space of dreaming.
In Swansula fiction Mugwort is harvested at the beginning of Autumn and is formed into a figure, a Muggins.
A Muggins made over the Autumn Equinox is burnt during the Spring Equinox to release prophecies and knowledge gained over a deep winter's sleep as new fertile energy.
The Muggins is visited over winter by the community who gather round for collective dreaming, clipping pieces of Mugwort to infuse, smoke or digest.
A woolen blanket is infused with the virtues of Mugwort to hold the Muggins in dream space. Dyed with the herb's leaves, steam and flower heads.
The Swansula Muggins dream of a common future for the land that best benefits local people and wildlife. Repelling negative influences such as profit driven developments and any private land ownership that threatens its nature.
Both Swansula Sail and Muggins were made over seven days of the Autumn Equinox.
INFUSING VIRTUES
STEEPED IN LANDSCAPE
Relics of Esturaine Magic
REM Relics of Estuarine Magic is an ongoing speculative archive exploring the landscape, ecology and folklore of the Swanscombe Peninsula and Thames Estuary.
The project imagines a future mythology of Swansula - a fantasy land grown from the peninsula - through a fictional museum collection of magical and ritual artefacts excavated from its landscape.
Made from found plastics, estuary plants, bones, thorns, roots, metals, seaweed and other gathered materials, the relics sit somewhere between archaeological objects, folk-magic tools and imagined technologies. Each is catalogued with its materials, physical description, use and meaning, building fragments of a belief system through which future communities navigate, heal, protect themselves and connect with the land.
Objects include the Sailing the Viels, Swansula Ritual Sailing Barge, the Anemoi Mundi Poppet and drawings for a Ceramic Infusion Vessel - artefacts from an imagined future in which the natural, synthetic, spiritual and industrial histories of the estuary have become inseparable.
REM 13 Drawing of Amulet, 2021
Pencil on cartridge paper
Pencil on cartridge paper
Bargehouse Gallery, Southbank, London
Sailing The Veils - Swansula Ritual Sailing Barge 2021
53 x 77 x 90 cm
Found plastic, bullrush, flint, sea grass root, deer bone, duck feather, hawthorn, blackberry thorn, rose thorn and hip, dogwood, thistle, recycled aluminum, copper and cotton, algae and bladderwrack seaweed bioplastic
Relics of Estuarine Magic, 2021
Fictional Digital Museum Archive
Fictional Digital Museum Archive
Original Artwork for digital background, 2020
Graphite Pencil
Anemoi Mundi Poppet on Element Brick
Object Type
Spiritual Navigation and Guidance; Divination
Dimensions
26 × 25 × 12 cm
Materials
Plastic, steel nail, seaweed, wax, bone, copper, brass, iron, rose fibre, glass and roots.
Physical Description
A poppet seated upon a plastic Element Brick, with four circular turrets marking earth, air, fire and water.
Use and Meaning
Used for independent meditation, in conjunction with the Swansula Compass, to aid spiritual navigation.
The poppet covers its eyes, signifying an openness to guidance through the elements and travel through the mind. Seated between earth, air, fire and water, the figure occupies the crossroads: a bridge between worlds.
The figure represents a wind deity and universal soul - a dual mother and mercurial goddess - with wing feathers carrying the colours of the four elements.
Before the figure sits a black seaweed candle used for uncrossing and protection, housed within a copper mask representing the self projected into the world. Removable pins can be lifted when drawing towards, or seeking connection with, particular elemental forces.
Alchemical Fountain of Rebirth, 2018.
Sketch for speculative Ritual Object
Sketch for speculative Ritual Object
Drawing of Ceramic Infusion Vessel
Object Type
Drawing; Speculative Magic
Date
c. 2122
Dimensions
21 × 29 cm
Materials
Ink and graphite pencil on manufactured wood-pulp paper.
Physical Description
Four notebook pages containing studies for an ‘infusion vessel’, designed to administer herbal water distillations and medicines during collective meditation.
Use and Meaning
The drawings suggest the use of folk medicine and collective magic as a means of bonding communities to one another and to the land of Swansula.
The vessel has five mouth tendrils through which participants breathe vapours distilled from local flora. Imagined for use outdoors around an open fire, plant vapours collect within a copper horn before being distilled into tinctures.
Ceramic panels representing the elements surround the vessel, intended to maintain balance throughout the ritual.
Ritual reed paper for Swansula scripture - sample made with Bullrush seed heads collected from Swanscombe Marshes
SQ Swansula Quartz 2099
Swansula Quartz 2099 is a fictional time capsule containing a digital collection of artworks left behind by the Lunasaws, a future community inhabiting Swansula.
Through moving image, sound, song and speculative technologies, the works offer fragments of life in a future Thames Estuary - tracing the Lunasaws’ relationship with a changing landscape, its waters, other species and one another.
Messages, rituals and ecological recordings are preserved within the Quartz as transmissions to an unknown future audience: a digital archive made to outlive the community that created it.
Digital Flint, 2020
SQ Swansula Quartz 2099, a collection of artworks within a digital time capsule. Curated online at swansula.site
Lunasaw Message, 2020
3.57m
Digital video, infared trigger camera
3.57m
Digital video, infared trigger camera
Sanasalu you,
May you find this in many a moon,
By washing in Swansula’s water.
That is where our wild spirit is home, a part of which here, is gifted.
We digitised our voice, our breath, to fossilise our minds.
Lines drawn under stars, by river in hide
With our hearts beating fruit ripened blood.
A painting by reed on new moon.
When feraled in circle, we are a coven at dance in the rush,
With lungs open wide, breasts stroked by tide,
Singing and dreaming in kin.
Words from Swansula in pain, expressed through our unwashed brains.
Ears opened to every whisper carried on wind,
We uncoded the croaks from the ravens that spoke in their name.
Like drawing, so much is just vision.
Technology we endeavoured to eco-fy,
Materials grown with their body in mind
But as synthetics, the surrogates we dreamt so dear were a burden
that no longer Earth can bare.
Organic, they perish with us.
The tools and wares we left behind for wilder times, to rust.
May you find this in many a moon,
By washing in Swansula’s water.
That is where our wild spirit is home, a part of which here, is gifted.
We digitised our voice, our breath, to fossilise our minds.
Lines drawn under stars, by river in hide
With our hearts beating fruit ripened blood.
A painting by reed on new moon.
When feraled in circle, we are a coven at dance in the rush,
With lungs open wide, breasts stroked by tide,
Singing and dreaming in kin.
Words from Swansula in pain, expressed through our unwashed brains.
Ears opened to every whisper carried on wind,
We uncoded the croaks from the ravens that spoke in their name.
Like drawing, so much is just vision.
Technology we endeavoured to eco-fy,
Materials grown with their body in mind
But as synthetics, the surrogates we dreamt so dear were a burden
that no longer Earth can bare.
Organic, they perish with us.
The tools and wares we left behind for wilder times, to rust.
To heal Swansula, we have to rewire our minds, and we have to rewild our hearts.
The past is scarred like ours, land filled, belly gauged and ripped away by men
who quarried till no longer fertile matter slept.
What surfaced was their deep past.
Prehistoric bones picked out by mining hands
Who clawed at every ancient root hugging tight in the chalk.
That is why in hand by flame we swore -
To conserve.
Till waters are clean enough for all to swim,
To lay their eggs within.
Till the plastic layered in so deep is sucked out by our love
And nature long steered from here moves in again.
Then, as guardians with all our heart,
Sink into the wild.
![]()
The past is scarred like ours, land filled, belly gauged and ripped away by men
who quarried till no longer fertile matter slept.
What surfaced was their deep past.
Prehistoric bones picked out by mining hands
Who clawed at every ancient root hugging tight in the chalk.
That is why in hand by flame we swore -
To conserve.
Till waters are clean enough for all to swim,
To lay their eggs within.
Till the plastic layered in so deep is sucked out by our love
And nature long steered from here moves in again.
Then, as guardians with all our heart,
Sink into the wild.
LUNMES Lunasaws Under New Moons Eve Summer 2045, 2020
120cm x 80cm x 12cm
Antique Ink, Mountboard, Reclaimed Wood,
Galvanised Steel Clout Nail
TS To Swansula 2092, 2022.
5.52m Audio track.
Composed and Produced by Shiv Pattni.
Vocal by Grace Emily Manning and Shiv Pattni
For you, my almighty reverence
For you, you feed me my life.
When I chew and digest your matters,
In the wall of my gut
I’m your wife.
But you can’t walk with your hands
‘Round my chest.
And when I bathe you can’t hold,
On to my breast.
With every sorrow I face,
I swim in your grace
But the fear of your tide holds me back.
Today, I distilled black berries
And I stained out a blotch of my past.
‘Cause the pain of feeling no safety,
Is a pain I don’t know I can last.
Sometimes I wish,
I wish I were cyborg.
For you, you feed me my life.
When I chew and digest your matters,
In the wall of my gut
I’m your wife.
But you can’t walk with your hands
‘Round my chest.
And when I bathe you can’t hold,
On to my breast.
With every sorrow I face,
I swim in your grace
But the fear of your tide holds me back.
Today, I distilled black berries
And I stained out a blotch of my past.
‘Cause the pain of feeling no safety,
Is a pain I don’t know I can last.
Sometimes I wish,
I wish I were cyborg.
Instead of nerves, I ran wires to my feet.
Every memory of Mum,
Every reverie of Dad,
I’d reprogramme their comfort I seek.
When we moved into the shadow lands.
To rewild, regrow and restore.
Every sorrow we face
We swim in your grace,
But our burden I cannot ignore.
In my womb is the ghost a child,
Not conceived, nor grew, never born.
For the demands they could make,
May aid you to break.
And as feral, they’d struggle, forlorn.
With everyday your system grows wilder.
Soon one dark, I will biodegrade.
As I return to my home,
And you root through my bone.
As we bind, I’m no longer
Alone.
Every memory of Mum,
Every reverie of Dad,
I’d reprogramme their comfort I seek.
When we moved into the shadow lands.
To rewild, regrow and restore.
Every sorrow we face
We swim in your grace,
But our burden I cannot ignore.
In my womb is the ghost a child,
Not conceived, nor grew, never born.
For the demands they could make,
May aid you to break.
And as feral, they’d struggle, forlorn.
With everyday your system grows wilder.
Soon one dark, I will biodegrade.
As I return to my home,
And you root through my bone.
As we bind, I’m no longer
Alone.
SROES Swansula Remote Odona Eye Surveillance 2057. 2020
1.26 m.
After Effects, Live Action, Infrared Trigger Camera,
Stop-Motion Animation
A voyeuristic capture of a symbiotic relationship between rewilding Eco-Maton Poto and human Lunasaw within the context of a conservation recording taken on an infared camera, speculatively captured by Swansula’s Odona Eye, a dragonfly drone.
From Swansula 2028, 2020
4.28m
Live action, stop-motion, After Effects
Sound Design composed and produced by Shiv Pattni
Synthesizer by Ryan Crooks. Vocal by Alice Aires.
Additional Vocals by Rita Pattni, Varsana Pattni
I am desperate to reach out my roots.
I am sorry, I have born you no fruit.
I am flooded, yet my heart has drained.
I am grateful, for you I can sail.
Now whisper to the buds at dawn,
To spring for all souls that are sore.
Who whimper for my wheezing chest,
Who endure, to heal mothers crest.
Ruminate as my satellite renews,
As you swim through my still, sodden blue.
The mud from your toenails prove,
You are ointment to my every bruise.
Fall back.
My wind is the arms that you need.
Look up,
Galaxies full of hands that you seek.
I am sorry, I have born you no fruit.
I am flooded, yet my heart has drained.
I am grateful, for you I can sail.
Now whisper to the buds at dawn,
To spring for all souls that are sore.
Who whimper for my wheezing chest,
Who endure, to heal mothers crest.
Ruminate as my satellite renews,
As you swim through my still, sodden blue.
The mud from your toenails prove,
You are ointment to my every bruise.
Fall back.
My wind is the arms that you need.
Look up,
Galaxies full of hands that you seek.
How long will this sickness take hold.
How long till it spreads to my soul?
Lunasaw are my spirit, I know.
All will fall till my body regrows.
As you return to my heart,
Your flesh resurrects as a star.
When our bodies ferment, we restart,
‘Till the shift in the mind of all parts.
In time when I am stronger to speak,
I will come to you, look out for me.
In my wildest of forms I shall be,
Watch the tide till no longer you see.
![]()
How long till it spreads to my soul?
Lunasaw are my spirit, I know.
All will fall till my body regrows.
As you return to my heart,
Your flesh resurrects as a star.
When our bodies ferment, we restart,
‘Till the shift in the mind of all parts.
In time when I am stronger to speak,
I will come to you, look out for me.
In my wildest of forms I shall be,
Watch the tide till no longer you see.
LUNMES 2045
LUNMES Lunasaws Under New Moons Eve Summer 2045, 2020OXO Tower Barge House, 2022
120cm x 80cm x 12cm
Antique Ink, Mountboard, Whitewood Spruce,
Galvanised Steel Clout Nail
Charms created with onion, garlic, nails, sea feathers, blackthorn, bramble, snail shells, rowan berries, flax fibre, conkers, crab apple, hazelnuts, naturally dyed cotton, hemp rope.
Charm Bags, naturally dyed wool, hand embroidered and filled with foraged herbs.
Clay vessel stained with oxides.
Carved walnut wood dyed with iron mordant.
Staffs of Hazel, Oak and Apple wood dyed with madder, woad, logwood and iron.
Rowan, Mugwort, Ragwort, St. Johns Wort dyed and stained with Iron mordant.
Renegade Nell, Disney +
Over 300m of fabric dyed with plants, background and action props made for Disney + Renegade Nell, 2024
Wildflower of Avalon
The Park Stage, Glastonbury Festival
Wildflower of Avalon, 2024 is created entirely from reclaimed festival tents, salvaged by Camplight. Inspired by the delicate marsh pea flower of the Avalon Marshes, it magnifies the local flora and connects today’s festival grounds with the ancient bogs and seas that once shaped this landscape.
The sculpture’s form is engineered using carbon fibre popup tent rods and collapsible poles, held in high tension to create the curves of each petal. Straps, eyelets, and channels embedded in the tents themselves have been reimagined as petal details, celebrating the original material while transforming its purpose.
Emerging like a flower in early summer, Wildflower of Avalon has popped-up, pitched into the cove of Land’s End Bar at the Park - an emblem of renewal, creativity, and the delicate beauty that can grow from waste.
Cetus, Belly Of The Whale
Plastic, magic, the Atlantic, weaving worlds, apples and changing states.
Experimental moving image, sculptural and photography works documenting the creation of Cetus, an eight meter long sculpture of a Humpback
Whale.
Samhain Samhain,
Let the ritual begin.
We call our sacred sea ancestors to come in.
Samhain Samhain,
The tide is high the veils thin.
We honour all that has gone before as we pull the plastic in.
Samhain, Samhain,
All nature is our kin.
Our hearts reach cross the sea of time as the Great Wheel turns again.
Walking The Whale, Trevone, Cornwall
2020
35mm film
The 31st of October is the beginning of Samhain and the start of winter, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest.
On this date in 2020 artists Grace Emily Manning and Andrew Whittle traveled to Padstow in Cornwall to visit Beach Guardian and begin the weaving and enchantment of Cetus. Meeting groups of young people from Wadebridge School and members of the Beach Guardian community of volunteers.
The creation of Cetus untangles the problem of plastic pollution along the ancient British coastline of North Cornwall. Through the making workshops we explore how landscape and people can become interwoven through the magic of Art.
When exploring the landscape of Trevone for the first time we discovered a blow hole. An ancient sea cave that had blown its top sitting in the middle of a field by the cliffs. Standing at the rim of a blowhole of immeasurable width, staring into the deep cavern and the sea below, we felt a connection with the blowhole of a Whale. A giant Whale at rest along the costal path.
As we wove the Whale back at Trevisker Garden Centre, the constellation of Cetus, the sea monster, rose above us each night.
We found Cetus both on land and written in the stars.
Cetus, The Belly Of The Whale, 2020
The Belly of The Whale, 2021
An experiment in Cornish Bladderwrack Bioplastic
The Tales of Cetus
The Tales of Cetus, 2026
A Beach Guardian x Hanging By A Thread film - Directed by Alex Stevenson
“An inspiring feature-length documentary that follows both environmentalists and artists in their fight against plastic pollution. Delving into not only the problem of plastic pollution but also the power we all have to inspire and create positive change.”
Cetus installation at Glastonbury Festival, 2022
Cetus , 2020 is a site-responsive project for the Seven Bays of North Cornwall created in collaboration with artist Andrew Whittle and social enterprise Beach Guardian.
Cetus is an eight meter long sculpture of a Humpback Whale woven entirely from Ghost Gear gathered from the Seven Bays in North Cornwall. Made in workshops over the course of two weeks with young people, students from Wadebridge secondry and beach cleaning volunteers from the local community surrounding Padstow.
Cetus was made to raise awareness of Ghost Gear, the name for lost, damanged and discarded fishing equiptment left to haunt the Oceans. Ghost Gear is the most harmful form of marine debris. The sculpture has been used by Beach Guardian to spread awareness of their work and engage hundreds in discussion about plastic pollution, both locally and globally.
Exhibitions:
Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. Somerset. 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Boardmasters Festival. Cornwall. 2023
Rock Oyster Festival. Cornwall. 2022, 2023
The Royal Cornwall Show. 2022
St. Issey Primary School visit for the G7 Summit. Cornwall. 2021
Crowdfunder UK. Cornwall. 2021
On permanent display at Trevisker Garden Centre. Padstow, Cornwall. 2020 - Current
Collaborators: Andrew Whittle, Beach Guardian CIC, Trevisker Garden Centre, Padstow.
Participants: Wadebrige School, Beach Guardian volunteers.
Funders: The Joanna Toole Foundation, Global Ghost Gear Initiave, Beach Guardian CIC.
Cetus, Belly of The Whale documents the creation of the sculpture beginning in 2020.
The Plastic Age
The Hidden Gardens, Glasgow, 2021
In collaboration with artist Andrew Whittle, Beach
Guardian CIC and Trevisker Community Meadow CIC.
The Plastic Age is a site-specific sculpture. A twenty-first century Stone Circle created from plastics cleaned from local beaches around the Seven Bays of Padstow in Cornwall by Beach Guardian and their volunteers.
The sculptures were co-created in workshops with local school groups and beach cleaning volunteers at Trevisker Community Meadow where The Plastic Age circle sits among the wildflowers.
The Plastic Age stone circle creates a space in the community meadow to come together. A place to host more workshops which engage young people with the issues of marine plastics.
The Neolithic Stone Circles and sacred sites of Cornwall that inspired The Plastic Age project were places of congregation where societies came together to discuss, celebrate and connect with the land.
Each stone is modelled on a nanoplastic particle photographed through a microscopic camera. In the workshops we provided opputunity for the students to take a closer look and investigate plastics under the miscroscope.
The sculpture highlights the magnitude of this microscopic problem. Microplastics are present in almost all water systems in the world, our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. Nanoplastics are potentially omnipresent in all life on earth.
By weaving with rope and making Plastic Relics we create space to engage with this challanging issue.
Guardian CIC and Trevisker Community Meadow CIC.
The Plastic Age is a site-specific sculpture. A twenty-first century Stone Circle created from plastics cleaned from local beaches around the Seven Bays of Padstow in Cornwall by Beach Guardian and their volunteers.
The sculptures were co-created in workshops with local school groups and beach cleaning volunteers at Trevisker Community Meadow where The Plastic Age circle sits among the wildflowers.
The Plastic Age stone circle creates a space in the community meadow to come together. A place to host more workshops which engage young people with the issues of marine plastics.
The Neolithic Stone Circles and sacred sites of Cornwall that inspired The Plastic Age project were places of congregation where societies came together to discuss, celebrate and connect with the land.
Each stone is modelled on a nanoplastic particle photographed through a microscopic camera. In the workshops we provided opputunity for the students to take a closer look and investigate plastics under the miscroscope.
The sculpture highlights the magnitude of this microscopic problem. Microplastics are present in almost all water systems in the world, our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. Nanoplastics are potentially omnipresent in all life on earth.
By weaving with rope and making Plastic Relics we create space to engage with this challanging issue.
The Plastic Age travelled from Cornwall to Scotland on the 1st of November reaching the City of Glasgow on the 6th November for COP26 Global Day of Action 2021.
The artwork was exhibitied in Glasgow at The Hidden Gardens. A space of sanctuary, learning and participation.
Participants: Beach Guardian community volunteers, St. Meryn Primary School, St. Issey Primary School, Oak Tree Primary School
Funders: FEAST Cornwall, Arts Council England, Cornwall Council, Trevisker Community Meadow, National Lottery Community Fund
The artwork was exhibitied in Glasgow at The Hidden Gardens. A space of sanctuary, learning and participation.
Participants: Beach Guardian community volunteers, St. Meryn Primary School, St. Issey Primary School, Oak Tree Primary School
Funders: FEAST Cornwall, Arts Council England, Cornwall Council, Trevisker Community Meadow, National Lottery Community Fund
Microscopic images of plastics taken by St. Merry Primary School, St. Issey Primary School and Oak Tree Primary School, 2021
Plastic Crystal, 2021 made by Oak Tree Primary School.
Technical Drawings of the Plastic Stones
Plans for sculpture armatures showing corresponding microscopic images of nanoplastics.
Englarging the measurements of the nanoplastics X1000 to create the framework of the sculptures.
Ghost Gear Poppets
Duloe Stone Circle, Duloe, Cornwall, UK
Infared camera
Span and woven between the stones, energised by ancient quartz.
Ghost Gear Poppets was a site-responsive project created for Beach Guardian CIC and the Seven Bays of North Cornwall, Padstow, in collaboration with artist Andrew Whittle.
Conjured in the lead-up to the G7 Summit in June 2021, the project drew inspiration from the folklore, witchcraft and Old Ways of the West Country. Working with local school groups, we transformed ghost gear and plastic waste collected from the Seven Bays into a series of protective poppets and talismans.
Through making and storytelling, discarded materials from the shoreline were reimagined as magical guardians; part warning, part protection spell. The project invited participants to reflect on the hidden impacts of marine pollution while connecting with local traditions of folk belief, craft and care for the coast.
Poppets made from Ghost Gear aid our cause through magic.
They are custodian spirits brought ashore with a message,
they know what is occurring in the Ocean deep.
Inside each belly is a charm,
Binding the waste where it can do no harm.
Set free, they journeyed by land and by sea to haunt the G7 summit.
Following the workshops, I created my own Ghost Gear Poppet - an oracle born from the sea.
With my brother by my side, we cycled across Cornwall carrying the Ghost Gear Oracle Head alongside the poppets made by the school children. Together, we journeyed to the ancient landscapes of Bodmin Moor; visiting Neolithic sacred sites, stone circles and holy wells.
There, amongst the granite tors and old places of gathering, the poppets were symbolically cleansed and recharged by the energies of the land. The pilgrimage drew on the folklore and spiritual traditions that remain deeply woven into the Cornish landscape, reconnecting materials gathered from the sea with the ancient stories and spirits of the earth.
Ghost Gear Oracle Head, 2021
Waste plastics cleaned from Cornish beaches by Beach Guardian CIC.
Buoy, rope, net, fishing tackle.
Lifted to the summit of Brown Willy, 420 metres above the sea, Sheepy was carried across the windswept expanse of Bodmin Moor and washed in its ancient waters.
Laid upon granite older than memory itself, the Ghost Gear Poppets rested amongst stone and sky, carrying the messages of the Ocean Deep to the ancestors of old.
Each poppet had a name and a character of their own. Sheepy travelled with my brother Nathan, becoming more than a sculpture; a companion for the journey. Made from ghost gear and plastic waste recovered from the coastline, Sheepy embodied a simple hope: that what is taken from the sea need not return as pollution.
Instead, Sheepy found a new life on land.
A small guardian. A travelling oracle. A reminder that even the most discarded materials can be transformed through care, story and imagination. Long after the pilgrimage ended, we hoped Sheepy would continue to wander with us, carrying the spirit of the coast without ever finding their way back into the waves.
The Washing of the Oracle
The Ghost Gear Oracle was washed in water drawn from sacred wells and holy springs across Bodmin Moor.This was not an attempt to erase the material's history, but to acknowledge it.
Plastic begins its life as oil; a substance formed from the remains of ancient marine organisms laid down beneath prehistoric seas. In a strange sense, the Oracle had already come from the water. Long before it became rope, net or fishing gear, it was part of an ancient ocean world.
Lost to the sea and recovered from the shoreline, the material carried the marks of another journey; one shaped by extraction, industry, consumption and pollution.
The washing became a small ritual of transformation.
Across Cornwall, sacred wells have long been places of blessing, healing and renewal. People leave offerings, make wishes and seek guidance from waters believed to hold memory and spirit. By carrying the Oracle to these springs, we brought together two very different stories of water: one ancient and life-giving, the other entangled with the environmental challenges of the present.
The holy water could not change the material itself. The plastic remained plastic.
But perhaps it could change its meaning.
Through care, pilgrimage and storytelling, a material destined to drift endlessly through the world's oceans was given another future. The washing marked a transition from waste to witness, from ghost gear to guardian.
