Forgotten Fruit (2009-13) Photographic series, text and animated maps
Exhibited as part of Civic International festival of billboard art (2011) and as part of The Social; Encountering Photography (2013)
The kerb is fascinating, maybe it’s the height, we spend twenty minutes shuffling up and down in the sun, pulling at the fine blades of grass which grow between the cracks. Picking up stones. Eventually we move on to a grassy mound and climb up and down, investigating the plants growing around the base of a young rowan tree and in the long grass at the periphery of the car park. The boundaries between destination and point of arrival have yet to be learned and curiosity carries us across the tarmac like sprawling weeds.
He falls asleep and we walk by the river.
The photographic series Forgotten Fruit was produced over the course of a year whilst I was pregnant and my son was a small baby, documenting fruit growing in urban locations close to where I live. Initially I set out to document these places from a purely visual perspective and unusually for me the work didn’t involve anyone else. After a year I had created a large collection of images, revisiting trees or particular locations as the seasons changed, the theme if there was one was perhaps an anxiety about where our food comes from and how we might survive on what is to hand. As time moved on and I gained distance from the work I found it hard to separate my perception of it from the experience of motherhood and began to feel that this close inspection of the world on my doorstep reflected something of the shifting perspectives and experiences of place I had encountered as a new parent. With this in mind I approached a new mother and asked her to create maps of her daily walks and routines, these maps made using the application ‘map my walk’ were exhibited alongside my photographs as short video animations. Video link
This work was exhibited at Washington Arts Centre as part of an international festival of photography 'The Social: Encountering Photography' organised by the North East Photography Network, at the exhibition preview fresh apple juice was made in the gallery from apples foraged nearby by the group Fruitful Durham. This link explains more about their work.
The development of this project was supported by NEPN and Arts Council England.
I also discussed this work at the conference Landscape Wilderness and the Wild at Newcastle University in March 2015, the related paper can be found here.