The L’antscrape series showcases works with wood ants to create an active work that allows nature to mould, erode and transform the semi-rotten timbers placed to be terraformed into their nest. The resulting biological artworks (as they have used the ant’s natural biological processes to create the work) are stunning, organic and highly intricate. Each is different and guides us through the excavation process that these ants undertook, likely with the help of the formic acid they produce, thus emerging the work seemingly a twisted network of caves. Rather than the wood being passive; its fibrous nature has become an active material shaped by ant activity. It has thus become documentative of the essence of wood and ants’ movements and biological processes.
The result is unpredictable, creating a unique structure every time; only slightly controlled given the unknown depths of the timbers chosen. The work also functions as a message to the viewer as the Southern Wood Ant is designated as near threatened, pushing this to the viewer and demonstrating the importance of the ant as an architect of woodlands.
In Sentinels (2022) our attention is drawn to these trees’ gaze as they observe us. It invites us to question what they might think about us and how our actions (destroying forests for mere profit, degrading their realm, and otherwise damaging them, thus challenging the viewer to reflect on these processes. The bark of these trees has been used to show the expressiveness of the underlying being, referencing aged, wrinkled human faces. By humanising the trees it exemplifies the fact that we are doing them wrong, together with the ecosystem as a whole, and encourages the viewer to rethink how we should be treating the environment.
Moreover, by framing and choosing faces in the trees, it also posits trees as being just like us and having memories of generations, centuries, and potentially millennia – judging our species for the damage it has caused as a relative youth (some 300,000 years old vs. 360 million years). The tree thus becomes the active survivor subject asking the viewer why humanity continues to destroy and hurt trees and ecosystems.