PREHISTORIC
PREHISTORIC investigates the relationship between object, language and imagination. Working with naturally occurring Jurassic stones collected from the Normandy coast, the project is less concerned with geology than with the mechanisms through which meaning is constructed.
The defining act is the naming. Once designated PREHISTORIC, the objects begin to operate within a wider symbolic territory encompassing origins, deep time, ancestry, ritual and myth. These associations are not inherent within the stones themselves but emerge through the interaction between material form and language.
Photography serves as a means of presentation rather than representation, isolating the objects and allowing the viewer to navigate the conceptual space opened by their titles. The work therefore examines how designation transforms perception, and how language continually extends the significance of things beyond their physical existence.
“The naming is not a caption. It is not descriptive. It is not an aid to interpretation”.