critical reflection

a deeper connection to place; belonging, fieldwork and sound

In this critical reflection I consider writers and artists working in the areas of embodied landscape, belonging and identity and look at artists’ methods of using the physical materials of place to explore how it relates to my own practice. I also look at approaches to fieldwork, which is a critical part of my practice, and discuss my research on sound as a way of getting a deeper connection to place.

keywords

embodied landscape belonging stone sound fieldwork

belonging in place

I align my art practice very much with an exploration of an embodied experience of place. In my reading and research I relate strongly to the bodily connection to landscape discussed by writers such as Wylie (2007), Ingold (1993) and Casey;

‘The body has everything to do with the transformation of a mere site into a dwelling place. Indeed, bodies build places’, (Casey E., 1993, p116).

In the summer I started to research these ideas more deeply by exploring the concept of landscape and belonging in relation to my methods and processes of working. A key artist for me has been Suze Adams who talks about belonging and dwelling in a place in relation to her practice. She proposes ‘alternative configurations of dwelling as a form of becoming (my emphasis) through performative practice’. She talks about ideas of ‘home’ using definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary including one which states that home is,

‘a place, region or state to which one properly belongs, in which one’s affections centre or where one finds refuge, rest or satisfaction.’ (quoted in Adams S., p115)

This idea of home and dwelling in a landscape manifested through the practice of making resonates strongly with me; I feel I am creating a sense of belonging and my own identity by both being ‘in the field’ and making work.

I have looked at many artists that have talked about this connection to place, belonging and identity including Tanoa Sasraku, Aileen Harvey and Kathy Prendergast. Ana Mendieta is an artist who also works in this area that I keep coming back to – partly because of how she talks about her work – it being a ‘dialogue with the earth’ that helped her to ‘re-unite her bonds with the universe’ (Viso O. M., (2008), p124). She said,

‘My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence. The making of my Silueta in nature keeps (makes) the transition between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature.’ (Ortega M., 2004, p25).

Mendieta’s work also resonates because she works with the physical materiality of place as I do myself.

My relationship to places I work in many ways different to what Adams and Mendieta describe. Adams discusses place specifically in relation to her current home and ancestral places and Mendieta was exiled from her homeland. I connect to a number of different places. I do not feel strong roots to a place from my own upbringing – indeed ‘home’ was not always a safe secure place. The making of work specifically through a dialogue with the rocks and environment seems to be a way for me to re-create identity and belonging – something that may have been missing.

The places I select (or that select me) have similarities; they are coastal locations, often with quite specific geological features and they also contain the complexities of human/non-human interactions. My current research site Kimmeridge Bay contains all of these (see unit 1 research).

I consider that my methods relate strongly to this felt connection to place. In my rock rubbings I am making an intimate connection between self and the rocks/landscape/place, seen, for example, in the rock rubbing made in Kimmeridge (pictured above). At the time I was unsure of why I was making it – what is it for? Now I look back on it with a new understanding and recognise that it becomes evidence or a physical ‘trace’ of that moment of felt bodily connection. In future I would like to return and make a much larger ‘body sized’ rock rubbing that holds this connection of place within it.

This approach to rock rubbing relates strongly to Do Ho Suh’s work which I was excited to discover at the Tate Modern recently. In his piece ‘Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home’ he wrapped the exterior of his childhood home in Seoul with mulberry paper and made a rubbing using graphite to create a ‘portable trace’ – a hugely time intensive work. I was interested that he then left the paper on for nine months to gather traces of the surrounding environment, including moisture and soil. This feels like it was a temporary land art piece being situated for a while in its ‘home’ location before re-locating it in exhibitions around the world.

It is also interesting that he calls the piece and this process Rubbing/Loving – referring to the technique as a ‘loving gesture’ that is mingled with a sense of loss. ‘For Suh, rubbing is an act of witnessing as well as exploring where memory actually resides’, he also notes that while he cannot get every tiny detail of the building, ‘It’s more about capturing enough visual and physical information to evoke a sense of the space as I experienced it.’ (Suh D. H., 2025, caption/notes). I can see parallels with my own work here.

Along with rubbings I might make in situ, this makes me think also of my small intimate rock rubbings that I made into photopolymer prints. ‘Moments of attention’ that hold in them the interaction between self and rock – from the place/landscape I am working in.

Richard Long’s mud paintings hold a similar sense of place and materiality. His ‘Waterfall Line’, shown below currently at the Tate Modern holds a direct relation to the place of his collecting the chalk and his own bodily interaction in the finger marks present. He writes ‘the mud works are another aspect of the physicality of my work, …the speed of my hand is important because that’s what makes the splashes, …. I make the top half and nature – gravity – makes the other half.’ (Long, 2025, caption). Showing that direct connection between my own bodily marks and the materials is something I hope to explore in future.

My own practice of using rock pigment also resonates with this idea of working with the materials of landscape. Making pigment from rocks and painting them on cloths was part of the installation in my MA show and in the film itself I am wearing the cloths, see photos below. Working with the materials of the coast and the act of wearing the cloths felt like I was re-inhabiting and re-creating my connection with place. For the research festival I am considering wearing the pigment cloths during a spoken work live performance – this will ground the work in place in a very bodily way.

More recently, I have been developing these methods by making printing ink using rock pigments and plate oil to use on my series of large-scale cardboard collagraph plates. The scale and the physicality of the process of making - bending and shaping the cardboard – and the textures of the board created when printed all seem to fit the subject matter of the embodied landscape.

While developing this work with pigments I have been continuing to examine what it is about the connection to stones and rocks in a landscape that is important to me. I have written before about connections to working with stone (Fredriksen B.C. and Kuhn M., 2023) and have considered a more emotional connection to stones described by Tracey Emin (see context unit 2). I also went back to Tilley’s writing which is very relevant:

‘The context of a stone is not simply its spatial background or its horizon, it always involves time as well’ incorporating a ‘whole network of past experiences and future expectations’; the invisible aspects of a stone are as essential to its meaning and significance as those that are visible’ (Tilley, p221). He goes on to say that stones ‘…are in a process of ‘becoming’ rather than in a static state of being’ (Tilley, p222).

This connects to Massey’s writing about place as a dynamic landscape, ‘conceived across a range of temporal scales…through personal and social….human and non-human.’ (quoted in Adams p82).

The material connection between humans and stones is also seen in Elena Damiani’s work and writing on the subject:

‘We must enact a vision that allows things and human beings to interconnect. We must not reductively separate organic from inorganic matter: we ourselves are “walking, talking minerals.” It’s not that we are surrounded by the geological; we inhabit it and it inhabits us.’ (Damiani E. and Turner M. M., 2020).

In this work, for example, Damiani has created a collage of watercolour renditions of storming dust particles in the atmosphere – exploring ideas of the land ‘travelling’ as environmental change moves dust around the vast expanses of the planet’s atmosphere. (Nordenhake Gallery website, notes, https://nordenhake.com/artists/elena-damiani)

These elements of materiality and time and the way these writers and artists talk about stones and organic matter as part of landscape and part of us, is a key connecting factor for me. I see the ‘matter’ in these environments are ‘coming into being’ in the same way as I am becoming/inhabiting my role as an artist by working in these ways.

Further reading of Massey in this area led me to her work talking about the creation and change within environments – the tectonic shifts that have moved and created landscapes over millions of years; that the landscapes are always ‘in process,… a kind of suspended, constantly-being-made interdependence, human and non-human’. She goes on, ‘..bearing in mind the movement of rocks, both space and landscape could be imagined as provisionally intertwined simultaneities of ongoing, unfinished stories’ (Massey, 2006, p17, p21).

This way of bringing together geological shifts in landscape over time and considering the human and the non-human, produces the idea of layering of time and experience. This is a key area I relate to and thinking about landscape as a series of ‘unfinished stories’ has been a key inspiration for exploring the stories of place in Kimmeridge for my research festival work.

Do Ho Suh, Rubbing/Loving; Seoul Home, installation photo and clip from process film, Tate Modern Genesis exhibition, 2025

Do Ho Suh RubbingLoving Seoul Home 2013-22.JPEG

Kimmeridge Bay rock rubbings, field trip March 2025

Rock rubbing using chinese ink, photoploymer print, Moments of Attention III, 2025

Richard Long room, featuring Waterfall Line 2000, remade 2025 (detail) and Norfolk Flint Circle, 1990, Tate Modern, 2025

Pigment cloths drying in garden, self in pigment cloths in Lucas Gardens, Peckham, MA show installation shot featuring pigment cloths and clay film support.

Mixing Kimmeridge Clay pigment ink, collagraph plate, taking a print

elena damiani As the dust unsettles VIII, 2022.jpg

Elena Damiani As the dust unsettles VIII, 2022, picture credit: Nordenhake Gallery, https://nordenhake.com/artists/elena-damiani

fieldwork as art practice

I have a background as a researcher and so a methodology that 'goes out into the field' to understand the world and come back to a studio to make work is a natural process for me. This approach to work where I find a ‘location’ to work on and make visits to explore a place led me to research the concept of fieldwork as part of my practice more deeply.

Sharp’s writing is particularly relevant where she ‘repositions’ fieldwork beyond ‘preliminary data collection or sourcing of raw material towards being a creative form and a critical experience in the becoming of imagination’ (Sharp K., 2022. p50). She goes on to discuss both Massey and Ingold in considering fieldwork. Because for Massey ‘place is always in the process of being made’ and for Ingold place is ‘formed in the imagination’, fieldwork is a natural extension and becomes part of the experience and perception of place:

‘In undertaking fieldwork artists and composers engage in a process of formation in which the imagination is materialised and formed through the encounter or presence of being in place. The creative manifestation is therefore not a separate outcome or activity but is formed through the process of being in the field.’ (Sharp K., 2022, p54-55).

This had a critical impact on me in how I think, plan and even experience fieldwork that I undertake. In some field trips I have felt that I need to ‘come away’ with a specific set of things – that I need to know in advance what I am doing and I feel a pressure that was often unhelpful ‘in the field’.

So, instead, on my last field trip while I had some ideas of what to do, and I had to plan for weather, tide times etc, I felt like I was listening more and was open to being part of a process rather than ‘data collecting’; taking the opportunity to consider fieldwork in Sharp’s terms ‘as a generative process.’ (Sharp K., 2022, p59).

Tilley makes further reference on approaches to fieldwork that have been particularly helpful. He writes, ‘Understanding and experiencing a place is a process of learning how to understand and how to feel’ …this… ‘cannot be hurried’. He argues that writing is an essential task as it ‘produces a vision and feeling for place…it slows perception and thought … providing a medium through which to knowledge of place is achieved.’ He argues that taking photos and video recordings are relatively passive acts, while ‘writing in effect forces one to perceive actively, to make connections, to articulate thoughts and feelings…’ (Tilley, p223-4). Drawing is obviously a similar process in the sense of taking time and ‘being’ with the landscape in a more active way.

As part of my last trip to Kimmeridge (over the summer) I began writing. Doing this writing also gave me more confidence in finding words for my ‘fieldnotes’ which I intend to use in my research festival sound piece.

Making fieldnotes as an idea of part of the artwork itself has also been inspired by looking at the work of Leonard McComb, see below, and Suze Adams. I find reading these fieldnotes – often quite simple, descriptive words, can be very transporting and, like poetry, allows you to create your own picture of a place in your mind.

Sharp also discussed the idea that fieldwork is also a ‘process of post-production, which may occur at a completely different location, such as back at home or in a studio.’ (Sharp K., 2022, p66) and talked about the creative practice itself as an ongoing activity - it doesn’t stop at the ‘end of a fieldtrip’ the place/ideas/creative work remains alive in the artists imagination, in the studio and in the audience’s perception. This also resonates with my methods as I bring materials and ideas back from ‘the field’ to work on at my studio.

Smithson’s non-sites are also relevant here. He created a series of ‘sculptures’ – bin-like structures which contained rocks, sand, broken concrete and other materials gathered from various sites around New Jersey. He would accompany these in a gallery space with photographs and map fragments of the places.

Smithson explained that ‘The material itself is very important.’, noting that the original site was also part of the work, “…my art exists in two realms—in my outdoor sites which can be visited only and which have no objects imposed on them, and indoors, where objects do exist…” (quoted in Flam, 1996, p234)

His ideas around site/non-site help me to consider where my work actually sits. Making happens on location, but I also bring materials ‘back to the studio’ to work on; this is different to what Smithson does. However, the concept of non-sites still has a lot of resonance in the way he talks about the connection to original place and his use of maps, photos and physical materials.

Kimmeridge Bay, field notes, August fieldtrip 2025

Davey R., (2022) Leonard McComb, Nottingham, England: Beam Editions, 2022.

Robert Smithson, A Nonsite (Franklin, New Jersey) (1968), Painted wooden bins, limestone, gelatin silver prints, and typescript on paper with graphite and transfer letters, and mounted on mat board, © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

sound and audio work

I made a short sound piece to accompany my Millbank installation (see here) and decided to revisit sound as a medium for the research festival to explore what this could add to the depth of experience of place.

An audio walk by Janet Cardiff has been a strong inspiration to me and this was the starting point of my research on using sound in relation to place. Something I like about her recordings is that although there is a narrative, characters and place, there was ambiguity about what was happening – Cardiff’s work is described by Fleming as ‘disconnected thoughts, sounds, conversations, and events strung together in a sequence that suggests mystery; a world not empty of meaning, but perhaps, too full of it.’. Fleming puts forward that in place, the listener is both ‘located and dislocated’, and she talks about her work creating ‘a virtual space anchored in reality’. (Fleming M, in O’Brien P., 2001).

In relation to sound walks Pivka and Zorman write that ‘walking as the principle of analogue coordination of mind and movement…is used…to implicitly express our view on the evaluation of time.’. They describe a sound walk ‘employing walking as an “instrument” for listening and sensibilisation to fully experience the landscape while perceiving its changes’ and while the participant walks through a location the ‘practice of active listening helps you to literally immerse yourself in place’ and give an ‘holistic perception of the landscape’, (Pivka I. and Zorman B., 2020). They discuss landscape listening as a ‘temporal experience’ which chimes very strongly with the effect I aim to achieve in my own work.

Ideas of acoustic ecology are also relevant here. In an article by Mollaghan A. (2015) the author discusses the idea of acoustic ecology put forward by R. Murray Schafer, among others, where ‘humans are affected by the sound of the environment in which they find themselves’ (Mullaghan, 2015, p1); this sits alongside ideas of psychogeography which studies ‘the precise laws and specific effects of the geographic environment on emotions and behaviour of individuals’ (Duboard G., 1955). These subjects are very pertinent to my work and certainly contribute to how I experience place.

Mulloghan discusses how filmmaker Pat Collins interweaves environmental sound and creates a connection between past, present and future which Schafer describes as ‘hearing as a way of touching at a distance’ (Schafer, 1994, p11) or effectively, across time. Mulloghan goes on,

‘Sound can stimulate a feeling, a mood. It can give us the sense of a shared collective consciousness, a sense of connection to the landscape to each other. Its diffuse palimpsestic qualities allow for a mediation between dreaming and waking states, blurring boundaries between consciousness and unconsciousness’, (Mullaghan, 2015, p8)

It is this additional sensory experience of place that attracts me to using sound. I began to formulate ideas of an experience of place in sound which connected to Massey’s ‘ongoing, unfinished stories’ discussed above. I initially thought I would make an audio walk around my location of Kimmeridge, but I now think that a layering of sounds and spoken word might create the atmosphere, the ‘palimpsestic qualities’ described by Mulloghan, that I am most interested in.

I heard a very inspiring example of this in the work of artist Cathy Lane. In her work ‘On the Machair’ Lane’, she aims to ‘explore and communicate’ something about history and memory related to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, through sound. It uses 'a mixture of monologues, field recordings and interviews collected during a number of trips to the Outer Hebrides as well as material from existing oral history archives.’ (Lane C., 2010).

I wanted to try out an experimental approach to including a sound piece in the research festival to see if it might develop a deeper connection to the landscape in my work.

Cathy Lane, On the Machair, 2015, https://soundcloud.com/playingwithwords/on-the-machair-1

conclusion

By researching belonging and identity in place, by looking at approaches to fieldwork and exploring the medium of sound as a way of carrying my experience of place, I feel I have gained a deeper understanding of my art practice. Critical to me is communicating my bodily experience of place and trying to do this by making work that carries traces of this experience.

During this unit I have developed many ideas that I wish to take further and these are discussed in additional information here.

key artists unit 3

Leonard McComb

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