I’m familiar with both the artists, Caroline Wright and Lydia Halcrow who hosted the creative conversations in the recording I watched today. Although both artists work by the sea, their passion for what is happening around us, with climate change and coastal erosion, resonates very close to me.

I have definitely had some inspiration about which directions I could push my work, especially with the mapping. These are a few of my thoughts.

Accelerated change. Loss. Preservation. Resilience.

Pressure from both emotional and social factors. Dramatic change. Visual engagement with the work.

Destruction of nature by nature. Climate change prediction’s.

“Last year was the warmest on record, the first to breach a symbolic threshold, and brought with it deadly impacts like flooding and drought, scientists have said.

2024 is first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial level

Annual average global surface temperature increase above 1850-1900 average”

Quote and images from Sky News- Friday 10 January 2025 03:22, UK

Traces of both nature and man. Mark making as an alternative form of mapping.

Have we reached a point in time where everything is now all digital? What about recording data? Much is still recorded manually.

Counter mapping, ways to map things that are over looked.

The flow of the river Thames where we live must have a restricted flow, which could contribute to it bursting its banks. People dump huge amounts of rubbish in the river, especially at night when they can’t be seen. Garden waste, grass cuttings and branches, builders waste, concrete and rubble and also rolls of carpet. It must be an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ concept with these fly tippers. I do believe if the river was dredged properly, the flooding wouldn’t be so severe.

Order form disorder. Order form chaos. How the process is recorded. The use of a grid links back to the mapping, holding onto something that could be chaotic.

Powerless in the face of nature. This comes back to the flood water, it is unstoppable and carries such immense power.

The movement is uncontrollable by humans, it is controlled by nature.

Working with the traces left behind. Sometimes there are no choices. Making sense of something that doesn’t make sense.

Our troubled relationship with climate change.

Everything is decaying, it maybe that we just can’t see it.

References Sky News- Friday 10 January 2025 03:22, UK – Written by Victoria Seabrook, Climate reporter. Accessed 11th January 2024.