Channelling (To Dwell Underneath the Ground) reinterprets extractive landscapes through the interweaving of myth, folklore, and geological material. Developed through research across sites including Hogberget Cave in Finland, Delphi in Greece, and the National Coal Mining Museum in the UK, the work considers coal as both substance and absence, a material that registers what has been removed while continuing to shape the surface.
Rather than treating myth as reference, the work uses it as method, drawing on narratives of descent, the underworld, and transformation to reframe the mine as a symbolic as well as industrial space. Through video, these sites are brought into relation, collapsing distinctions between scientific knowledge and cultural belief, and positioning landscape as a terrain shaped by both extraction and imagination.
In this way, coal mines are reinterpreted as monuments to absence, where the extraction and burning of fossil fuels are inscribed into the ground, marking the ongoing environmental and climatic consequences of industrial activity.
With thanks to Allan Armstrong and family and the National Coal Mining Museum for permitting the 3D scanning of Armstrong's coal carvings, held in the NCMM archive.