Soft Rock, foam, virgin wool, virgin wool dyed with sunflowers, daffodils, calendula, buttercups, pomegranate, hibiscus, beetroot, roses, figs, camellia, cabbage and blueberries, 53 x 55 x 60 cm, 2023.
Soft Rock is my first (and currently only) free-standing wool sculpture, developed from my Evolve and Emerge wall series. This work explores themes of rituals, the occult, and healing plant practices. The shapes of the hemispheres suggest an opening, a breast, and genitalia. My inspiration came from a trip across the Yorkshire Moors and the Peak District, where I contemplated the land, rocky outcrops, and soft, voluptuous contours. I incorporated these as surface landscapes in the Soft Rock piece to evoke ripples in water, topography, or meditative practices from the East, such as sand art.
The repetitive shapes seen in the hemispheres (left image) were directly inspired by rock art (right image) and markings found in stone circles, henges, long barrows, and chamber tombs. These ancient sites, located across the UK, France, Peru, Japan, and beyond, contain similar stone markings, suggesting that they served as a form of language for tribes to communicate with each other or with other tribes passing through their territories.
There are hypotheses that the collection of marks on a single stone could represent comments on the solar system, the night sky, pathways in the landscape, or maps of underground water flow. Perhaps there is valuable knowledge to be gleaned from this 'lost knowledge' of our ancestors—a literal or spiritual map connecting us deeply to the land, animals, and the spirits that coexist with us.
