By Sea/By Land
A body of work that draws on medieval reliquaries, applying their talismanic properties to contemporary objects associated with protection and survival, transforming them through goldwork, beach stones and other jewel-like elements into objects of uncanny beauty. Flotation devices and a child’s lost shoe allude to the perilous journeys made by people compelled to leave their homeland.
By Sea/By Land I (detail)
Text materials: acrylic paint over raised gilding medium.
The raised words at the center of By Sea I are from the opening line of W.B. Yeats’ poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1890), here Yeats' nostalgia and longing for a sanctuary in nature is imagined from the perspective of the asylum seeker.