Counter-Nacre: Bubbles or Pearls?
2019 - 2026
Counter-Nacre is an evolving work in progress exploring how value, meaning and significance become attached to objects, images and narratives. Drawing upon archives, found objects and biological processes, the project investigates how fragments acquire identities and how competing interpretations accumulate around the same material.
The project takes its title from nacre formation, the biological process through which an irritant is transformed into a pearl through successive layers of accretion. Counter-Nacre proposes an alternative process: one that resists fixed meanings, interrupts inherited narratives and preserves the possibility of alternative readings.
Current development includes archival research at Kresen Kernow, object collection, casting experiments, photographic work and installation studies.
After Alethea: Fragmentary Persistence
2026
After Alethea: Fragmentary Persistence is a new interdisciplinary project developed through engagement with the Garstin family archive at Kresen Kernow. The project begins with a fragment: a catalogue reference to an "unstrung pearl necklace" belonging to artist Alethea Garstin. Although the necklace survives only as a trace within the archive, it has become a starting point for exploring how meaning accumulates around incomplete evidence through interpretation, repetition and material transformation.
