The starting point for my work in the Time, Place and Memory project fitted adequately with my work in the previous semester as I was interested in the notion of entombment and concretising memory. To carry on this theme I decided to look at memorial stones as it dealt with issues that I felt I could pursue further.
Graveyards are often found in woodland areas so this allowed me to introduce organic elements of the cycle of life and death, natural and human forms. I incorporated this notion into my practice by growing water cress in the inside of an old thick book and then documenting its succession from life until death. I explored this idea further by pressing clay into the engravings inscribed on the memorial stone and when I peeled it back the moss had fixed onto the clay. I then encased an open book with the clay and filled the spine with water cress reiterating the cycle of life and death working simultaneously.
I often found that when the engraved clay dried it would often crack and break therefore I incorporated this into my work and embedded the broken pieces into different materials such as plaster and wax, in a sense capturing time and memory in a contained place.
