Birds and bananas

Have been trying to work out how my banana project Foreign Soil and my larger body of work on bird flight fit together. Maybe they don't. Maybe the increasing focus on botanical themes in my work is a completely new direction and I'm in an awkward transition phase. But I tend to believe that your work may take you on some interesting and worthwhile journeys, but it usually brings you back to the same place.

The banana project began at a point where I didn't have a lot of exhibiting commitments and so I gave myself permission to do anything. And I realised I'd been thinking about growing bananas in Devon every since a casual conversation with Christine Duff of Organic Arts in 2009. I then found myself involved in The Library of Lost Books and made a work about seed banks, so there's a preoccupation with ecological change.

But I also think it's interesting that my bird flight work is concerned with testing the limits of objectivity, that is, trying to be really precise about what's out there in the world. With the banana project and its nod to scientific research, I'm doing almost precisely the opposite - trying to will something into existence through sheer force of documentation.