Drey (2024)
Stick and twigs, jute twine
35 x 19.6 x 5.9 inches

I am a British Australian woman who merges my BA(Hons) Fine Art from London’s Middlesex University with my Master of Environmental Management from University of New South Wales to explore the intersection of art, society and ecology. Working in sculpture, installation and expanded photo media, my practice, like that of The Roots International Art Project, reflects my interest in urgently preserving natural systems and the coexistence of humans with what eco philosopher David Abrams calls “the more than human world”.

This small, hanging stick nest, Drey, was inspired by scientists’ increasing use of artificial nests to boost breeding amongst birds, insects and mammals around the world. It has a long but tiny rope ladder – a leitmotif in my work – that hangs from it and drapes across the central axis. Twisting like DNA strands in the environment, the ladder acts as a delicate counterbalance to the nest on the opposite side of the axis. The work signifies the precarious situation facing these critters of the Anthropocene and playfully represents the absurdity of the situation we find ourselves in of both destroying nature on the one hand and desperately trying to conserve it on the other.