Author name: Jen Southern

A live Zoom conversation with a glacial erratic situated in the Canadian Shield of Eastern Manitoba.

Quiddity: The Sarsen Stones of Avebury Fay Stevens The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Avebury (Wiltshire, UK) is an ancient stony archaeological place constructed using local sarsen stones of post-glacial Cenozoic silicified sandstone. The stones are formed through a petrification process in which silica-rich fluids seep into voids (created by rocks, wood, bones, shells) and

Wild Country Clare McCracken The granite rocks of Mt Buffalo National Park (Victoria, Australia) are plentiful, charismatic, and large.  The 300m vertical Gorge rockface is one of the largest cliffs in Australia. Climbers scale it throughout the summer months staying overnight on precarious camp beds dangling from ropes.  However, the majestic rocks of the mountain

Aggregate: Glittery stumbles around Blackhill Quarry with Edna Lumb in hand Fritha Jenkins For this conversation I propose to extend research which first took shape in the exhibition, Aggregate: Fritha Jenkins and Edna Lumb, curated by Catrionia McCara at Leeds Arts University in 2018. Aggregate constituted an experimental curation open to the public in a

Deep Weathering at the Rest Area (or, making jam in the “nation’s food bowl”) Kaya Tatjana Barry “Deep weathering” is a process that takes millions of years of seasonal wetting and drying of certain rocks to produce high levels of iron-oxide in organic material. The result may be a rich, red soil, which is perfect

They are breathing: living rocks and multispecies consensus Perdita Phillips For some time I have been grappling with how to use geological metaphors to make connections between people, ecosystems and physical processes, that might help unravel some of the more intractable ecological issues that surround us. Cultural theorist Astrida Neimanis and I wrote about the

terrain erratique Brass Art Erratics, meteors, scholar stones and hag stones infuse our artistic practice. We use them to think through temporal concerns – the out-of-time-ness of a meteor, or the slow movement of a glacial erratic in comparison to human action. We are particularly interested in the part standing in for the whole –

Karst: A Landscape of Mineral and Water Holly Veselka I am a conceptual artist from central Texas who uses emerging technologies as both medium and subject to highlight issues of land, biodiversity, and climate change. I live in a region of karst limestone whose porous nature has supported numerous natural springs and endemic species such

Conversations in the Sedgwick. Rona Lee, Jean Boyd, Louise K Wilson.   In collaboration with director Dr Liz Hide, we propose the archive and store of the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge (where Rona is an affiliated researcher) as our rocky environment. Designed by Cowper Griffith Architects and opened 2019, it houses