Holding Ground
Site-Specific Residency, Dorset Coast
Holding Ground is a site-specific residency project developed over the course of a week along a stretch of the Dorset coastline. The work explores slow, reciprocal relationships between body, land, and sea through a tactile, situated clay practice. Returning to the same beach daily, the project was shaped by repetition, presence, and deep attention to place.
Each day began with a walk along the shoreline, gathering raw clay from the earth and shaping it directly by hand into simple, spherical forms. These pieces were made without tools or studio intervention, only through the rhythm of the artist’s body and the resistance of the material itself. Formed in moments of stillness, the works were then left to dry in the open, warmed by the sun, textured by the wind, and occasionally marked by sand or salt spray.
Once hardened by the elements, the forms were carefully returned to the sea. Placed on rocks, nestled in the tide line, or partially buried in shingle, each piece was offered back to the landscape in a gesture of exchange. Over time, the clay softened, fractured, or was carried away by the waves.
These ephemeral interactions were documented in photographs and moving image, not as final artworks, but as traces of a reciprocal process between the maker and the environment. The week-long residency allowed for a deepening engagement with a single site, where familiarity and repetition became a method of attuning to the changes in tide, weather, and terrain. By working with only what was found on site, native clay, the artist’s hands, and the time available - Holding Ground reflects an ethic of low-impact making rooted in observation, slowness, and care.
As a neurodivergent artist, this slow, embodied method of working fosters a grounded sensory relationship with the land and sea. The act of shaping, carrying, and placing each piece becomes a way of thinking through making, forming not just objects, but temporary relationships and small gestures of belonging.
Holding Ground is both a record and a collaboration: between artist and coast, between material and tide, and between stillness and movement. It reflects on erosion and offering, on how we hold space, and on what we leave behind.
