I think it's good to remember your journey, self validation if you will, so here's a project from a couple of years ago about SAND (yup)....
‘Quicksand’ (2020) by Emma Gibson
'Quicksand’ is about assumptions in relation to perceptions: we assume that there is the same amount of sand available as stars in the sky. We can't live without it, roughly 4 tons of concrete are produced each year for every person on Earth, but most people will say, ’just use sand from the Sahara to build stuff. We’ve got loads of sand.’, but you can’t because it’s wind-blown and all the grains are circular so they don't stick together. People are stealing sand (organised into Mafia's) because it’s a seriously valuable commodity. Some go to the beach to sunbathe; others turn up in the middle of the night in a truck to take the sand away. It's also dredged from seabeds and rivers and it's regulation as a natural resource is being campaigned for globally. This project offers a monument to something so tiny, deadly and necessary.
EXHIBITION TEXT: This triptych of sculptures by artist Emma Gibson sees miniscule grains of sand transformed into megalithic forms, putting this endangered but seemingly ubiquitous material – used to make anything from phone screens to windows, plastics to paint – quite literally under the microscope. Using micro-3D scanning technology, Gibson worked with The Imaging and Analysis Centre at the Natural History Museum to discover the otherworldly shapes of individual sand grains before recasting them as colossal forms. Each piece was made using recycled plaster, cliff chalk, timber and a pioneering resin made from recycled plastic bottles, monoliths for unregulated natural resources.
more information on the project can be found here.
Commissioned for Selfridges ART BLOCK, curated by The Yorkshire Sculpture Park, collection of Scarborough Museums Trust
With thanks to the Imaging and Analysis Centre, Core Research Laboratories, The Natural History Museum for lab time and creating the first micro-3d models of sand grains with me, and sustainable fabricators SPACER for helping me use a first-to-market PET resin, film by POOK productions.