Surfacing takes the “boring frame”, a 19th-century apparatus used to probe the ground for coal, as both structure and metaphor. Reconstructed in the studio, the frame holds adapted images of miners working underground, positioning them as figures engaged in acts of carving rather than extraction. The work draws a line between the first puncture of the surface and the labour that follows, where anticipation gives way to material transformation. In doing so, it reframes mining as a sculptural process and considers how images and industrial structures mediate our understanding of what lies beneath the surface.
