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Having previously written about my rock enthusiasm (Erratic Behaviour, August 19th) I am now working on a new publication which blends together artistic research and photography. I was amused to find there is a type of rock called ‘chert’ which seemed like a made-up name, something I have been doing myself, with names like ‘dedge’ and ’tilted’.

I have found there are many specimens of cherts in museum collections, and taken one of them as the focus for my research. This has two parts:

  1. I write about the rock, with no further research, i.e. just what I know from memory
  2. I write about the rock, researching further details I consider important

And there’s a third section, in which I publish specimens from my own rock collection, which have largely evaded categorisation…


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In the summer, I visited Fogo Island, where I offered a rock classification service and spent time at the Museum of the Flat Earth as a Visiting Artist.

Alongside these activities I also visited a number of museums on the island. For a small place, Fogo has quite a few of these dotted around the island. I was drawn particularly to the historic houses, such as the Bleak House Museum (pictured above). They provoke feelings of nostalgia through their decoration schemes and objects, but also a feeling of anxiety that the local culture contained in them is on the point of disappearing.

The museums are curious in that they are quite different to anything I have encountered elsewhere. They are not carefully curated as per the best practice of local or regional government, and perhaps this is a form of unconscious resistance to such normalisation. Over the past 150 years, most large museums have changed greatly, and this is why those that have changed less (such as Pitt-Rivers) are so compelling. They are the past, the closest we will get to time-travel, to escaping a world of instant information which can be so dissatisfying.


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