William Smith was a geol­o­gist and canal engi­neer who devel­oped the first ever geo­log­i­cal map of Britain in 1815. A copy of his book ​‘Stra­ta Iden­ti­fied by Organ­ised Fos­sils’ from 1816, is housed in the Spe­cial Col­lec­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds, and I was very hap­py to find an orig­i­nal copy of the 1815 map on dis­play at the Sedg­wick Muse­um, Cambridge. 

Look­ing at a map that charts what lies beneath our famil­iar net­work of man­made roads and cities has marked a huge shift in my under­stand­ing of land­scape — and its exploita­tion — and see­ing this impor­tant piece of his­to­ry in the col­lec­tion was a key ele­ment in bring­ing this research togeth­er. The dark grey area is coal, and it lies across a large swath of the coun­ty of York­shire, where I hold a deep sense of belonging. 

I was born in Stain­cliffe Hos­pi­tal in Dews­bury, which is built on the site of an old Coal Mine. I grew up in Shaw Cross, which is also above a coal mine, and close to Gawthor­pe, where my dad grew up and where Coal Car­ry­ing cham­pi­onships still take place every year even though the indus­try is long since gone. One of my ear­ly mem­o­ries from Shaw Cross is being ush­ered out of the pri­ma­ry school build­ing to the road­side, so that we could all wave at Mar­garet Thatch­er as she trav­elled past in the back of a black car – I remem­ber the shape of her hair and her hand wav­ing back from behind the glass. I didn’t know how divi­sive and polit­i­cal­ly charged this ​‘dri­ve-by’ was at the time. 

This pho­to­graph was tak­en from the carpark of a pub called the Rein­deer Inn, where I start­ed work­ing as a kitchen porter when I was 13 years old. The Nation­al Coal Min­ing Muse­um is on the Cap­house Col­liery site, which was sunk in an area where coal had been mined from shal­low pits since 1515. Two shal­low coal seams out­crop in the area, the Flock­ton Thin and the Flock­ton Thick. The Flock­ton Thick was worked by James Milnes who leased the min­er­al rights from Mary Wort­ley, the Count­ess of Bute in 1778 — thus mak­ing this the old­est exist­ing mine shaft in the country. 

There are many inter­con­nec­tions between dif­fer­ent sites I have vis­it­ed in this research project. 

For exam­ple, the Corycian Cave sit­u­at­ed close to Del­phi in Greece is famous as a site of the ora­cle in Greek mythol­o­gy. This cave was thought to be the meet­ing place between a group of local women and Gaia – god­dess of the Earth. These women, lat­er referred to as Pythia as the site and the myth devel­oped, would sit above a chasm in the earth and become intox­i­cat­ed with vapours that seeped out of the rock before deliv­er­ing prophe­cies to their local community. 

This divine con­nec­tion with the earth became well known, accord­ing to Greek myth. In the 10^th Cen­tu­ry BC, Apol­lo – god of rea­son – killed the ser­pent that pro­tect­ed the sanc­tu­ary of Gaia to over­throw her and estab­lish his seat at what was believed to be the cen­tre – or the navel (ompha­los) — of the world. In mem­o­ry of the slain ser­pent and Gaia, a woman was cho­sen to be his ora­cle and the term Pythia was adopt­ed to describe this female role.

In 7^th Cen­tu­ry BC the first tem­ple was built on the site, and for over 1000 years the Pythia – who were all local women — were con­sult­ed by lead­ers across the globe, who trav­elled to Del­phi in search of answers that would shape and define glob­al pol­i­tics and soci­ety for cen­turies. The real pow­er at the tem­ple of Apol­lo was held by the priests how­ev­er, who ​‘inter­pret­ed’ the words and sounds that came from the Pythia posi­tioned above a cleft in the ground. 

In Feb­ru­ary 2023 I trav­elled to the out­skirts of Helsin­ki, Fin­land to locate the Hog­ber­get Cave – anoth­er cave known local­ly as the ​‘womb of the earth’ due to its unusu­al uterus-shaped for­ma­tion. There are many caves across the world that are referred to as ​‘wombs’ due to their shape, and many have been used as sites of rit­u­al and pil­grim­age. What I like about the caves I have vis­it­ed is their charged pow­er; they are nat­ur­al open­ings that enable us to be enveloped by the earth for a dura­tion of time, to be pro­tect­ed from the change­abil­i­ty of the world above and to be encased in the dark­ness that defines them.

Enter­ing this cave did indeed evoke notions of birth canals and mate­r­i­al trans­for­ma­tions explored in ear­li­er works. A prod­uct of deep time, the form of this cave offers new poten­tial read­ings in rela­tion to female sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and bod­i­ly becom­ings in the con­text of artis­tic prac­tice. This trip was fund­ed with an a‑n bur­sary and was a joint expe­di­tion with Flis Hol­land, a Finnish artist who works with mete­orites, uter­ine tumours and trans pol­i­tics. The affect that this for­ma­tion had has sub­se­quent­ly fed in to the research and devel­op­ment for this project.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the ecol­o­gy of mines is rec­og­nized as cave fau­na by biospele­ol­o­gists (Biol­o­gists who study cave biol­o­gy). Mines are, effec­tive­ly, arti­fi­cial cave-like habi­tats for organ­isms that dwell there. Mines are forced open­ings in the earth, rather than nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring ones — fis­sures in the land­scape force­ful­ly sunk in order to gar­ner their min­er­al wealth.

For me, there is some­thing evoca­tive about think­ing about this vio­lent action, specif­i­cal­ly in rela­tion to the Pythia and the vapour-induced con­nec­tions they orig­i­nal­ly had with Gaia — god­dess of the Earth — in the Corycian cave. Cap­i­tal­ist extrac­tion is fused with mytholo­gies in this research to gen­er­ate new sto­ries of dis­tur­bance, agi­ta­tion, extrac­tion and prophe­cy in rela­tion to the geol­o­gy beneath our feet – which in my case is coal and the post-indus­tri­al land­scapes of which I am a part.

In ref­er­ence to late cap­i­tal­ism and the result­ing cli­mate emer­gency, the ouroboros is recon­tex­tu­alised in my work as an ancient sym­bol that warns of a time in which humans move towards their own destruc­tion. In the con­text of this research, this retelling of the sym­bol becomes a mark­er for the rebirth of the earth with­out us. With this work, I recon­tex­tu­al­ize the ouroboros and the ser­pent more gen­er­al­ly as a warn­ing sign of the world to come for humans, rather than main­tain­ing its intend­ed pur­pose as a sym­bol of the cos­mo­log­i­cal uni­ty of all things. 

In ancient Egypt­ian mythol­o­gy, the ouroboros is an embod­i­ment of the low­er region of the cos­mos that bears an inti­mate rela­tion­ship to the dark­ness of the under­world. In Greek mythol­o­gy, Python was the ser­pent liv­ing at the cen­ter of the Earth, believed by the ancient Greeks to be at Del­phi. The snake is thus a cave dwelling pro­tec­tor of Earth. 

Also inspir­ing is the scaled crea­ture that appears out of the dark­ness in Odilon Redon’s 1896 depic­tion of Oannes, an amphibi­ous being bor­rowed from Mesopotami­an mythol­o­gy. The title reads ​‘I, the first con­scious­ness of chaos, arose from the abyss to hard­en mat­ter, to reg­u­late form’. Haunt­ing and strange­ly beau­ti­ful, this etch­ing speaks of a reck­on­ing, in which a new wis­dom re-shapes both the world and human’s posi­tion in it. I includ­ed this etch­ing in the Post­Na­tures exhi­bi­tion in the Graves Gallery.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the fos­silised remains of ammonites were giv­en the name snake­stones in Eng­land, because they resem­ble coiled snakes turned to stone. Muse­um palaeon­tol­o­gist Dr Paul Tay­lor, who has an inter­est in fos­sil folk­lore says, ​‘Sto­ries about snake­stones came pri­mar­i­ly from two places where ammonites are very com­mon and easy to find: Whit­by in York­shire and Keyn­sham in Som­er­set’ (Bas­sett, 1982). Ear­ly map mak­er William Cam­den men­tioned the pecu­liar for­ma­tions in his book Bri­tan­nia, which was pub­lished in 1586: ​‘If you break them you find with­in stony ser­pents, wreathed up in cir­cles, but eter­nal­ly with­out heads’ (Bas­sett, 1982). 

These small stat­uettes were used in rit­u­als, as offer­ings to Gaia and the Pythia. They are held in the arche­o­log­i­cal muse­um at Del­phi.
In addi­tion to this, there are lots of inter­est­ing con­nec­tions with Delphi’s Pythia and Coal Queens. The Coal Queen pageant was a tra­di­tion that ran until the 1980s with­in min­ing com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try. Coal Queens could be the wife, sis­ter or daugh­ter of pit work­ers and would be crowned each year at local min­ers’ pic­nics or car­ni­vals, and the win­ners would rep­re­sent the Nation­al Coal Board at events across the globe. 

In the Nation­al Coal Min­ing Muse­um col­lec­tion there are also a series of evoca­tive coal carv­ings of women made by coal min­er Allan Arm­strong – which in the con­text of this art­work are re-con­tex­tu­alised as sacred arte­facts or offer­ings (Cour­tesy of Allan Arm­strong and fam­i­ly and the Nation­al Coal Min­ing Muse­um). There is also ref­er­ence in the works devel­oped to Dor­cas, a female spir­it who was said to speak to min­ers deep under­ground. Thus, the work draws on myth­ic and cos­mo­log­i­cal inter­re­la­tions between sacred sites and sacred bod­ies, via arte­facts found in ancient and con­tem­po­rary cul­tures and through mate­ri­al­i­ty, site and nature.

These small stat­uettes were used in rit­u­als, as offer­ings to Gaia and the Pythia. They are held in the arche­o­log­i­cal muse­um at Delphi.

Exper­i­men­tal process­es seek to mim­ic the dig­i­tal skins of LiDAR scans / 3D vir­tu­al mod­els. They rep­re­sent forms found in mine shafts and cave open­ings, and are made of jes­monite and coal dust. I’m inter­est­ed in man­i­fest­ing these data sets through sculp­ture and the mis­place­ment of that – so the real is dig­i­tized, and then trans­lat­ed again in to form – much like the pho­to­graph­ic process­es I devel­oped in ear­li­er works.