My work focuses upon extractive, linear, global systems, reliant upon cheap oil, enabling mass production to produce maximum profits. Levels of such production create irreparable environmental damage, rely upon an exploited labour force, creating mountains of waste. I explicitly present our anthropogenic impact upon the planet, with my practice straddling textiles, film, sculpture, infographics and the growing of flax, raising awareness of issues to encourage behavioural change.

 

Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics and Jason Hickel’s Less is More: how degrowth will save the world underpin my values and visions for a healthier and more equitable society. Using discarded materials I have visualised Raworth’s doughnut, that clearly defines the ecological ceiling beneath which we all must live, in order for humanity to thrive. The overshooting of this edge is causing climate breakdown, whilst the shortfall of basic human needs is causing acute deprivation, migration and war, all of which we are now seeing across the world at increasing levels.

 

Addressing the global issues surrounding fast fashion, which now accounts for 69% of all textile output, I collaborated with a material scientist undertaking a form of reverse alchemy. This enabled me to subsequently calculate how much oil is needed to make a synthetic garment. The UK wastes an average of 220 tons of textiles each year. Using this calculation, I was able to determine that it would require the equivalent of 20 oil tankers for its production.​ This process has been captured in my film The Fabric of Oil (5 minutes),  where I have also melted fabrics to reveal their materiality; plastic. 4 Garments: plastiglomerate refers to what geologists now recognise as a new rock formation, indicative of our anthropogenic impact upon the planet.

 

Through collaboration with a Geologist I have created a living strata within a terrarium, with oil and its by-products at its base. Flax is a regenerative, carbon absorbing plant, traditionally grown for its fibres to make linen. This piece, Terrarium#1 symbolises our polarised textile system, indicating the viable alternative to the damage that oil is creating within our planet, representing the urgent change that is needed.

 

Artificial Nature is a new body of work, that responds to the rise in plastic flowers and astroturf on a global level. Astroturf is a business worth $78 billion US, expected to rise to $117 billion US by 2028. At a time when biodiversity levels are falling, is this really a time to be boosting plastic nature?

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I have also written a booklet Fast Fashion Statistics. For further details please contact me.