Sitting upon the notion of the ‘readymade,’ these objects have been constructed from found materials; however, unlike Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel or Man Ray’s Le Cadeau, they are built to perform. Utilised as filming apparatuses, the contraptions conduct an enquiry into disregarded, forgotten spaces that join the urban to the rural, on the brink of being perceived as wastelands and wildernesses. Nature writer and journalist Rob Cowen refers to such places as edge-lands, or simply, the ‘edges’.

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The gadgets seek to engage in a discursive interaction with such a place; transformed over time into a perpetuating biome hosting a variety of native and nonnative species. The works re-observe and enable a new way to describe this overlooked area through eyes dissimilar to humans’, objectively exploring humanity’s present-day relationships to the edges. Although they operate as extensions of my own body, the action of walking through the forest becomes communicated through the gadgets’ perspectives, presenting a prospect of an alternative view.

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How might everyday perceptions alter through a reconsidered view of these overlooked realms? And what significance might such edges hold within human lives? Humans are constantly attempting to ‘reconnect’ to nature, be it through sentimentalised writings or the average walk-in- the-park. ‘Nature,’ within the everyday appeals to the masses via kitsch objects and nature shows, appetising the viewer into a hyperbolised perspective of ‘the wilderness.’ Idealisation of such perceptions deprives nature of its “Real,”1 disconnecting all the alternative properties it could otherwise hold, which, through such aesthetic, misty-eyed conceptions may consequently fail to become remembered.

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1  Seung-hoon Jeong, “A Global Cinematic Zone of Animal and Technology” In Animals, edited by Filipa Ramos, London and Cambridge, Co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and MIT press, 2013. P 94