My work is site responsive where choices of material and process are informed by being present in place and time. Appropriating a careful and methodical approach, the practice centres on aspects of observation and performance which relate to place and event.
Field Works consist of 3 works, A Field Study, In the Field and A Field Guide to Leftover Matter. Focus is on the landscape, exploring not only what is visible but what lays hidden under the surface. Appropriating the nature of a field study, recent work is inspired by a repetitive collection of data obtained through observation of one field. Ritualistically documenting over time allowed for the work to unfold and nuances to emerge.
Photographs of the field are taken daily, supported by a record of the date, time and weather. Days where documentation is absent is represented by a blank page or a missing line. Maintaining the timeline despite the interruptions of empty days was key to creating a sequence which followed pattern and rhythm. The objects were extracted from the ground, emerging through the activity of working in the land. The leftover matter was not collected by conscious seeking but through a chance encounter. The quantity and diversity of discarded material, left behind and forgotten led the work to consider environmental issues. It alluded to the nature of what is meant by waste and at what moment an object loses its usefulness.
A Field Study (2022) highlights the mundane nature of everyday documentation within a poetical sense of arrangement and space. In the Field (2022) is a digital film where the core sequence is taken from inside the field. Disruptions appear when the work introduces periodic intrusions with still images and shifts in sound. A Field Guide to Leftover Matter (2022) exposes the garbage when it turns perception upside down. The objects are uplifted, rather than concealed. The long grasses lightly touch the floor, still but for an occasional movement of air causing them to dance.
Breaking Ground (2022) is work developed and located in the landscape which explored a sense of becoming through processes that reflected particular characteristics of Farnham Heath. People of the commons once cut turf for fuel, contributing to components identified with shaping the land. They carefully took out every third turf in a row staggering the rows to create a chequerboard effect, to maintain this resource.
Revealing a relationship between human consumption and nature was essential research for shaping the work. The grid formed by each turf became the guidelines for the work to evolve. The excavated material became the building blocks which created the stacks and became the monuments to this unique landscape. Neither adding nor removing material, the negative spaces, directed by the cuts in the soil become the positive shapes. These reflect the activities of turf cutting and the management of land lost to the contemporary world, maintained only through knowledge and care.
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Fine Art 
Marina Aoki | Fine Art
