A residency at Winterbourne House & Gardens, and the Lapworth Museum of Geology facilitated by Capsule and the University of Birmingham, who worked together in supporting an artist to make and display work in response to the university’s fascinating and varied collections.

The Lapworth collection is home to hundreds of fossils, maps and geological items, whilst the arts and crafts era Winterbourne House houses, amongst many other living libraries, a rare collection of succulents as well as display glasshouses containing plants from all over the world. It also features an original letter printing press which can be used by visitors.

Using techniques relevant to archeology and the arts and crafts movement – casting and printmaking (screen, letterpress and photoengraving) I gathered images and objects that focus on the textures of the fossils and plants to make my own ‘collection’ based on pattern, texture and the similar designs of the minerals and flora.

This collection materialised as a set of records formed by copper etching images on copper discs which, which when played on a record player, provided a multitude of different sonic textures, beats and drones that served as a sonic archive of the objects and was used to create a new sound work which was pressed onto vinyl as a dubplate. Dubplates, intended for use to test records pre-mastering, or for special edition short runs, are not as resilient as vinyl plates; with every play of the vinyl by visitors, more damage happened to the plate, and also the needle, as the copper records were also played. The work, like the nature of creating collections by removing objects from the environment, inherently involved destruction in order to exist.  Following the notion of collections, a series of poster prints and printed record sleeves also accompanied the discs.