The first named storm of the year, Storm Goretti, arrived last night.  The garden was battered by gusts of wind from these increasingly common weather events.  The film exposes brief flashes of light catching the sculptures in moments of rain-soaked vulnerability before being plunged back into darkness: fragments of footage: blurred, handheld, shaky.

The river has swollen and overflowed into the garden. Parts of the bank are gradually collapsing. Sculptures hold their ground: rope tightening, surfaces softening, materials absorbing water - hanging on, sagging, adjusting, enduring. What does “resilience” look like in a sculpture not made for permanence?

Meanwhile, amid all this 'chaos', the snowdrops have begun to appear. Their arrival always feels strangely contradictory: delicate, almost paper-thin, and yet somehow among the first to emerge - small ecological happenings

Overnight, a light dusting of snow settled across the garden, coating the sculptures in a thin white layer. Snow is perhaps the most immediately transformative weather condition: it gradually accumulates, softens, and disguises surfaces.

The atmosphere in the garden alters. Sound is dampened and everything feels quieter. The sculptures are transformed without being physically changed — temporarily reconfigured.

This moment feels like a genuine form of co-creation with the weather: transformation occurs through exposure, beyond my control.

Snow acts as an active participant — temporarily redefining the work in ways that cannot be directed (or repeated?).

Earlier today, a log pile in the garden was unearthed, revealing extensive mycelial growth across the surface of the wood. The logs were covered in fungal networks, highlighting the role of fungi in breaking down organic matter and returning it to the soil.

The surface conditions of the logs (marked by softening, fragmentation, and irregular patterning) closely resemble changes observed in the outdoor garden sculptures. Exposure to moisture, fluctuating temperatures, and contact with the ground (soil) has produced comparable effects across both natural and synthetic materials - surfaces show signs of gradual transformation.

These processes demonstrate how materials respond when placed within outdoor environments over time. Their changing condition reflects ongoing interactions with moisture, microorganisms, and seasonal cycles.  Is this a kind of co-creation that de-centres the human/artist (me) that the research is seeking?

The presence of fungal networks highlights the role of decomposition as a regenerative process in the garden. As Merlin Sheldrake notes in Entangled Life:

“Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.”

Within this context, the sculptures and surrounding organic matter can be understood as participating in a shared material system, shaped by exposure, weathering, and biological activity. The garden operates as a space of ongoing transition, where materials move through stages of breakdown and reintegration.

Following the festivities, the strange interval time between Christmas and the New Year. Days blur. Time warps. The garden seems to pause, caught between endings and beginnings (knots/mesh).

The sculptures mark this time shift in various ways. Their surfaces show what the season is doing to them. Materials crack, droop, sag. There is a sense of exposure (even vulnerability) as they endure cold, damp, and prolonged darkness. Huddled together, they weather the slow time of winter.

Some of these materials were never meant to be outdoors. Cushions, duvets, pillows (soft, absorbent, domestic things) now exist beyond the 'safe space' of the home. Moisture seeps in. Algae speads across surfaces. Textures stain, and decompose.

These materials are reclaimed from the local environment (and charity shops/Emmaus) — cast-offs, leftovers, things already displaced. Given a second life, they now occupy an ambiguous state: They exist in a condition of endurance, shaped by weather, time, and exposure.

There is something uneasy in thiese prolonged material encounters. A sense of struggle. Of being out of place. Of a quiet, ongoing negotiation between material and environment. The sculptures seem to bear a kind of accumulative trauma.

In Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway writes:
“The chthonic ones are not extinct. They are the ones who stay with the trouble.”

These sculptures feel akin to that idea. Chthonic not as monstrous, but as of-the-earth — entangled, enduring. They do not seek comfort or restoration. They simply remain, altered by their conditions, bearing the marks of time.

Earlier this autumn I took part in a mentoring session with artist Mark Titchner as part of Metal’s Create Cambridge programme. The conversation offered a chance to reflect on how sculptural practice operates once it leaves the studio and enters public space.

Much of our discussion centred on materiality, longevity, and the realities of working within commissioning frameworks. Mark spoke openly about the tensions artists face when producing work for public contexts: the pressure to create something that appears permanent, stable, and robust, while often being asked to do so with limited budgets, tight timescales, and restrictive material expectations. The result, it seems, is a kind of contradiction — artworks designed to last, but made under conditions that rarely support longevity.

This raised important questions for my own practice, which is increasingly concerned with outdoor exposure, weathering, and material vulnerability. My work often embraces impermanence rather than resisting it, allowing surfaces to change, decay, or respond to environmental conditions. In contrast, public art commissioning frameworks frequently prioritise predictability, low maintenance, and risk reduction. The gap between these positions became a central point of reflection during our conversation.

Mark also spoke about the often invisible labour involved in public art: negotiating with planners, engineers, and stakeholders; navigating concerns around safety, durability, and public reception; and managing expectations about what art should do in shared space. These layers of negotiation shape the kinds of materials and relationships that are seen as 'acceptable'.

What emerged most strongly during our conversation was the question of  who is responsible for an artwork once it enters public space, and how that responsibility is distributed over time. Public artworks are rarely static; they weather, gather marks, and change meaning. Yet the systems surrounding them often struggle to accommodate this. There is an underlying discomfort with decay, with change, and with the idea that an artwork might not remain fixed or pristine.

This conversation has fed directly back into my own research ( material agency, environmental exposure, and the ethics of care in sculptural practice). It has informed my thinking around how vulnerability, maintenance, and transformation might be understood  as integral to the life of a work.

Rather than offering solutions, the session opened up a productive set of questions:
How do we work responsibly with materials that are designed to change?
What does care look like when permanence is no longer the goal?
And how might public art create space for uncertainty rather than conceal it?

As winter deepens, dormancy, endurance, and an atmospheric heaviness have begun to permeate the sculptures in the garden.  What seemed playful, companionable, and light-hearted in the summer months have now taken a different turn.

 As Deborah Bird Rose writes, eco-trauma often unfolds through “slow unravellings that leave their marks across bodies and landscapes” — changes that may be subtle but nonetheless significant. While the sculptures do not possess actual bodies (in a biological sense), their material surfaces visibly register this kind of incremental, weather-driven transformation.

Working with materials that have already undergone histories of neglect or abandonment invites further consideration of how sculptures participate in cycles of breakdown and endurance. If the research proposes that materials hold agency, that they act, respond, endure, and transform, then winter months get closer to what Rob Nixon describes as slow violence: attritional processes that leave marks over time.

If the sculptures are made from unloved, overlooked and discarded materials/objects then perhaps it is inevitable that questions of material trauma begin to arise. These sculptures are left in a state of situated abandonment, outdoors, unruly, unprotected, making them vulnerable.  Entities undergoing processes beyond my control.  Co-creation is not always gentle. It can be volatile, unpredictable, and at times disturbingly evocative.

To de-centre the human-maker is also to relinquish control, to allow materials to encounter conditions that may feel harsh, even damaging and that "stay with the trouble".

Ther recent move of the sculptures to the small patio area in the graden can be understood through Tim Ingold’s notion of the meshwork: a tangle of lines, trajectories, and lives that “issue forth from the movement of beings as they make their way through the world.” Ingold describes how things come into form not as closed or bounded objects, but as ongoing processes—knots in a field of relations. “To be alive,” he writes, “is to be caught up in a world of becoming, in a meshwork of entwined lines.”¹

The winter conditions reinforce this openness. Rain, frost, and damp seep gradually into porous skins and weathered surfaces. They are permeable rather than protective and let the environment in. This porosity aligns with queer ecological ideas that resist isolation (neatly wrapped up) and celebrate interdependence, refusing the notion of the autonomous, self-contained object.

Clustered together, the sculptures now resemble an improvised community.  An assembly of odd, misfit bodies finding cohesion in proximity, what could be considered a queer kinship, where difference coexists without hierarchy.   A seasonal knotting.

¹ Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (Routledge, 2011).

Low winter sun created an unexpected interaction between one of the sculptures and washing hanging on the line. The sheet acted as a temporary screen, catching the sculpture’s moving shadow across its quivering surface.The environment animated it.

The sculpture, the sunlight, and the sheet formed an improvised set of relations or 'intra-actions'. The scenario emphasised how small environmental changes can influence the  behaviour of the garden sculptures: how everyday materials, weather, and domestic routines can shape the work.  The research continues to be informed by chance interactions, non-human agencies, and atmospheric conditions rather than planned interventions.

Today, all the sculptures have been relocated onto a small patio area, a temporary 'shelter' for the colder months ahead. Their relations have shifted from dispersed discreet entities to a close cluster, a small 'herd' gathered for warmth, rest, and protection. This seasonal coming-together echoes the instinctive behaviours of plants and animals at this time of year: conserving energy, waiting.

Grouped closely, they now lean and rest beside one another, sharing intimate space. Their closeness creates a sense of mutual support through the dormant season.

This resonates with ideas in queer ecology, where relations are fluid, interdependent, and non-hierarchical. Rather than presenting as isolated artworks, they become close companions: enduring, adapting, and becoming-with one another.

The sculptures now wait for their next configuration in spring, when they will return to the wider garden and form new relations with emerging plants and insects.

In late Autumn the garden ground is covered in fallen fruit.  A parallel becomes apparent between the behaviour of the fruit and the surfaces of the sculptures.

Both the fruit and the sculptures undergo visible transformations: blotches spread, small wounds open, colours darken or fade, and irregular textures emerge. The materials of the sculptures echo the organic processes taking place on the ground. In this sense, the sculptures operate almost as replicant entities that mimic the textural transformation found in nature at this time of year.

Tim Ingold describes materials as “active participants in the world’s becoming” (Ingold, 2007), emphasising that transformation is a shared condition of all material entities. In the garden, both fruit and sculpture participate in cycles of weathering, decay, and renewal.

The emerging 'chthonic' qualities of the sculptures (earthy blemishes) connect with this relational view of matter. Donna Haraway’s reminder that “we must stay with the trouble; we must become capable of response” (Haraway, 2016) resonates here. The research involves remaining attentive to these subtle, ongoing exchanges.

Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.

Ingold, Tim. “Materials Against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues, 14(1), 2007.

When the clocks go back (2:00 am on Sunday 26 October 2025) and daylight is restricted, the darker nights create a different atmosphere in the garden. The sculptures begin to take on uncanny qualities and their presence becomes stranger, more ambiguous. They feel exposed and hidden at once.

Photographing them with flash heightens this transformation. The images appear stark, over-lit, bodily entities caught in a kind of nocturnal surveillance, like rabbits caught in the headlights. The flash freezes them fleetingly, flattening the surrounding darkness into something impenetrable, while illuminating every crease, knot, stain, and sag in their queer bodies. What emerges is a kind of forensic encounter with the work: harsh, immediate, and strangely theatrical.
Darkness interrupts habitual looking. It alters scale, depth, relation. It makes the familiar strange. It heightens listening. It slows perception.

In many ways, the sculptures feel more alive at night, more creaturely, otherworldly; more in flux. Their vulnerability is heightened, waiting for something……..

Donna Haraway writes, “Staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.”
(Haraway, 2016, Staying with the Trouble)

Working in the dark feels like a way of staying with the trouble that rejects clarity, control, and cleanliness of the well-lit studio or gallery. Instead, it enters those “unfinished configurations” Haraway describes: the sculptures (chthonic, creaturely entities) have their own nocturnal life.

Night-time becomes another collaborator.

Over the past few weeks, a new element of material experimentation has begun in the garden: the making of waste paper pulp from discarded cardboard, off-cut paper, and leftover studio debris. This is mulched down, softened with starch (cornflower), and combined into a pliable, fibrous 'paste'. Into this mixture is infused leaf matter, bark fragments, seed husks, nutshells, and other foraged debris gathered from the garden floor. The result is a composite material.

This pulp paste is then pressed or smeared onto the skeletal frameworks of the sculptures. The transformation is immediate: the framework becomes host to a peculiar new skin. Embedded leaves and nutshells protrude like fossils..

These surfaces contain evidence of labour, breakdown, and recomposition - a bit like composted flesh - a hybrid material grown through cycles of waste, decay, and renewal.

Working with paper pulp asks questions appropriate to the research:
What does it mean to make from waste rather than from extractice resource?
How might sculptures carry their ecology + toxins within their own surface?

Is it possible to infuse food waste into the pulp to 'feed' the wildlife?

Can a skin be a living archive?

At this time of year (Autumn), the garden becomes a multisensory site, with the smell of composting, and visually alive with the slow processes of decay. Surfaces  host new life forms: mildew, fungus, lichen. These transformations invite reflection on how far the research can, or should, embrace decomposition as part of the sculptural process.

Allowing material to deteriorate, to grow mould, to stain, to smell, challenges the conventions of preservation and aesthetics that underpin Western exhibition practice, where permanence and visual stability/fixity have long been equated with value. If these sculptures are later taken into a gallery context, what are the ethical and institutional consequences of bringing living or decomposing matter indoors? What limits are imposed by public health, taste, or curatorial expectation?

As Tim Ingold writes, “Materials are not inert substances to be formed at will but active participants in the world’s becoming” (Ingold, 2012, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture). Accepting this means relinquishing some control — allowing the work to participate in its own transformation. Yet this also exposes a bias in what I choose to “allow” materials to become: clean vs. dirty, living vs. decayed, aesthetic vs. abject.

The question remains whether the material’s agency and its capacity to change beyond my intention is a form of collaboration or resistance.

After some heavy rain, the garden sculptures now sit in a state of soaked suspension and on the verge of falling apart. Their surfaces have absorbed the weather like skin:

This moment calls into question the very pivot of the research.
At what point does a (human) intervention become necessary?
When to step in to repair — and when to let the work resist the weather, to stay with the trouble of being outdoors, exposed, and changing with the seasons?

The materials themselves respond: some pliable and absorbent, others rigid and water-resistant -  a small ecology of transformation. - an ongoing choreography between material, time, and environment.

But this also raises uncomfortable questions:

• What values guide decisions around care, maintenance, and endurance?

• How do aesthetics and durability intersect with ethics and sustainability?

• Who, ultimately, is the work for — the viewer, the maker, or the site itself?

Perhaps the next step is to explore materials that are non-extractive, that return to the soil rather than resist it. Biodegradable composites, plant-based binders, unfired clay, or woven organic fibres might offer new modes of making that align more closely with the seasons.

Donna Haraway’s invitation to remain present within the complexity of things:

“We are not in a time of endings, but of beginnings that require staying with the trouble, in the thick present.”
— Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016)

A recent workshop at MASS HQ opened up a lively discussion around ethics, consent, and more-than-human collaboration. The conversation emerged from a presentation film of fox encounters with the sculptures- These encounters occur unpredictably:  They raise questions about agency, intention, and co-creation. What does it mean for a (non-human) animal to engage with an artwork? Is participation being invited, provoked, or simply observed as part of a wider ecology of curiosity?

This process relates closely to Cat Flynn and Florence Fitzgerald Allsopp’s writing on interspecies performance, which describes “a shared attention and porous authorship” where outcomes emerge from overlapping agencies rather than being directed by one species alone (Flynn & Fitzgerald Allsopp, 2022). The fox’s presence can be understood through this lens — as part of a dynamic network of exchange that includes animal, object, weather, and time.

The discussion also highlighted the ethical tensions surrounding intervention and influence. The idea of adding compost materials or organic matter to the sculptures’ surfaces was proposed as a way to encourage more ecological contact without coercion. This introduces the possibility of participation that arises through shared material processes rather than deliberate invitation.— a practice of becoming-with that remains open, unpredictable, and ongoing.

Extending the notion of collaboration beyond human participants raises questions about which species are invited/accepted and which are excluded. Insects, fungi, and small mammals may all participate materially in outdoor sculptures — yet some presences, such as rats, spiders or wasps can provoke discomfort or aversion. This raises an ethical dilemma: how can research based on non-hierarchical relationships avoid reproducing hierarchy through selective participation?

If all matter and living beings are considered equal collaborators, then excluding some — out of preference, fear, discomfort, or hygiene concerns — reveals the cultural boundaries of what can be called an “ecological” practice. Jane Bennett suggests that “A touch of anthropomorphism… can catalyse a sensibility that finds a world filled not with ontologically distinct categories of beings but with variously composed materialities”  (Bennett, 2010, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things).

 If collaboration is taken 'seriously', it must include the inconvenient, the unchosen, and the unruly. To deny certain species participation is to reinforce a hierarchy within what is meant to be a 'flat ecology of relations'.

The challenge lies in acknowledging bias and finding a way to trace where human comfort, aesthetics, and care boundaries meet the unpredictable agencies of the more-than-human world.

Each material response becomes a kind of collaboration, a dialogue between human intention and material agency. Working outdoors, it’s impossible to maintain full control. The garden constantly intervenes.

As Jane Bennett reminds us:

“The capacity of things — edibles, commodities, storms, metals — not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own.”
— Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter (2010)

As the clocks go back and Halloween is around the corner, the garden becomes a space of shimmering hybrid entities participating in cycles of decomposition and renewal.

Donna Haraway describes monsters as “the necessary consequence of our entanglements; they are the people who trouble the categories, who refuse to stay put, who surprise us in their unruly, generative ways.”
— Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016)

These monstrous forms inhabit a space of transformation — part ruin, part regeneration — where new connections emerge from the overlooked Their unruliness is a refusal to settle into binary categories or static forms.

The sculptures continue to change as autumn sets in. Their surfaces shift and soften, the outer skins sagging, creasing, and folding under the weight of water and time -  a record of endurance — between material, weather, and season.

The surface operates as boundary and membrane, adapting to external forces - revealing transformation across its surface -  malleable materials;

Within the garden, signs of persistence are ever present. Vibrant dahlias stand out among the fallen leaves, offering flashes of colour against the fading season. The coexistence of decay and resilience suggests a state of constant negotiation/collaboration.

In this space the surface becomes a site of mutual exchange and documents the quiet agency of matter responding to the world around it.

The harvest marks a seasonal moment of gathering, storing, and preparing for what comes next...  It offers a way of thinking about cycles of renewal, and transformation.

It can be seen as a 'practice' of resourcefulness — working with what is available, foraging locally, and finding value in what already exists - an attentiveness to place and season, and to the potential of materials to transform over time.

Processes such as fermenting, drying, or composting demonstrate how transformation extends beyond human control, revealing the agency of materials themselves.

The harvest also suggests fluidity and interconnection: growth and decay as intertwined.

During Storm Amy, one of the suspended sculptures in the garden was exposed to intense gusts of wind, revealing a performative and unpredictable collaboration between weather, and environment.  Evoking the concept of vibrant matter (Bennett, 2010)  The wind became a sculptural force, transforming the work into a dynamic, responsive entity for a moment in time - the capacity of sculpture to act, adapt, and co-inhabit space with more-than-human agencies.

As summer fades, the sculptures in the garden continue to adapt with the changing season. The long hot, dry days of July and August have left surfaces dry, cracked, and sun-bleached.

Each sculpture feels alive and more like part of a living ecosystem — hybrid, bodily structures that endure, weather, and transform through entanglement with their environment.

Over three days, participants were invited into world-building, collective action, and storytelling that sought to reconnect human and ecological systems.

Key themes included:

• Moving from consumer to citizen: narrative change as a precursor to systemic change.

• Collective agency: action as reciprocal and collaborative.

• Learning new languages: redistributing power through new platforms and voices.

• Optimism, humour, and wonder: countering disillusionment.

• More-than-human intelligence: recognising decomposition, symbiosis, and renewal as vital processes.

Running alongside the festival, Staying with the Trouble — an exhibition inspired by Donna Haraway’s 2016 text — presented 38 Ireland-based artists exploring multispecies entanglements through kin-making, craft, humour, and collaboration with plants, animals, and compostable matter.

Research Reflection

Connections to DFA practice-based research,

• Work with locally sourced, seasonal, and waste materials in sculptural/digital processes.

• Explore AR/VR/AI intersections with more-than-human systems.

• Use humour, absurdity, and kin-making to unsettle anthropocentric hierarchies.

• Reframe art as repair, decomposition, and renewal rather than permanence.

In Haraway’s terms, the task is to stay with the trouble—to practice care, reciprocity, and creative world-building in uncertain times.

This sculptural assemblage has recently collapsed under the weight of heavy rain, following months of drought. Once upright, it is now waterlogged, unable to stand, on the verge of collapse: a weathering process that exposes the tension between weight, gravity and vulnerability. Each shift (tilting, sagging, falling) marks a stage in an ongoing cycle of making, unmaking, and remaking, shaped by the environment as co-creator.

As described in the DFA research,

“The garden functions as both studio and collaborator, a living system through which sculptural practice negotiates cycles of transformation, decay, and renewal.”

At this time of year, the garden begins to take over. Flowers and vegetables spread across paths, climb into structures, and entangle themselves with the sculptures. The surfaces of the works become interwoven with stems, blossoms, and rotting fruit, creating temporary, (collaborative) compositions between plant life and sculptural form.

“Materials do not exist, for they are not in place but on the way along paths of growth and transformation.”
— Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (2013, p. 31).

Sculptural assemblages often stand as precarious monuments — fragile, unstable forms that seem always on the verge of collapse. Installed in the garden and captured by night vision cameras, these works have recently become sites of unexpected encounters with a local fox - climbing, and tugging at the sculptures.

In these fleeting moments, the fox’s presence appears to temporarily complete the artwork, through its bodily form, textures, and compositions, blurring into to the exisiting materials. The outcome captured as a photograph and short film is a co-constituted image.

 The fox encounters make visible a further stage in this process of making, unmaking, and remaking, in which other species play an active role.

At the same time, these experiments raise questions about ethics and consent. How to think about animal presence within human (my) artistic practice? Is this co-creation, collaboration, or something more entangled and resistant to definition? embracing the ambiguity, allowing the precarious sculptures to remain open-ended and unsettled.

The fox becomes both participant and witness, shaping and reframing the sculptures in ways that cannot be anticipated or controlled.

A guiding thread in this research is Donna Haraway’s observation that “art-making and nature are deeply entwined… entangled, messy, contingent, and dependent upon material interactions.” This idea has been, and will continue to be, central to the methodology, informing how materials, site and process are entangled.

By allowing the environment to take an active role, the sculptures evolve through making, unmaking, and remaking, embracing impermanence and the agency of the more-than-human world.

Becoming Hybrid: Re-imagining Sculptural Practice in the Context of a Queer Ecology

Research Abstract

Becoming Hybrid is a practice-led research project that reimagines sculptural making through the lenses of Queer Ecology, posthumanist thought, and material agency. Centred around the transformation of found and discarded materials into hybrid, bodily assemblages (Chthonic Ones) the research explores how sculpture can move beyond static, human-centred western traditions and instead embrace impermanence, interdependence, and co-creation with the more-than-human world.

Developed through seasonal, site-responsive experimentation in a liminal garden, the project treats the environment as both studio and collaborator - a living laboratory for making, unmaking, and remaking. Drawing from theorists including Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, and Stacy Alaimo, the work investigates how sculpture might operate as a dynamic, ecologically attuned process shaped by decay, transformation, and multispecies entanglement.

Questioning dominant sculptural models rooted in monumentality and extractive materials, Becoming Hybrid proposes an alternative methodology - one that foregrounds process over permanence, relationality over authorship, and material vitality over control. The research contributes to contemporary discourse on sustainable and inclusive art-making by positioning sculpture as a space of ecological response-ability, queer potential, and speculative making.