Chapter One: The Path of Least Resistance

2017 | Multidisciplinary Installation, Performance & Participatory Work

Listastofan Arts Collective, Reykjavik, Iceland



Chapter One: The Path of Least Resistance developed during a residency at Listastofan Arts Collective in Reykjavik, Iceland. Bringing together photography, projection, sculpture, text, sound and audience participation, the work expanded the practice into a more immersive and spatial form.


Within the wider Landscape as Mirror, Self as Myth trajectory, the project marks a major shift from symbolic image and performance into environments that ask the viewer to physically enter, move through and contribute to the work.




A handwritten participatory message displayed on a pale surface and surrounded by a circle of dark volcanic stones.


Material & Spatial Language


Many of the works within the exhibition explored the relationship between conscious and unconscious experience through photography, projected image, reflective surfaces, sculptural elements and text.


At the centre of the installation, projected imagery moved across a suspended form, shifting with light and viewpoint. Nearby sculptural works brought together found and natural materials, reflective surfaces and written fragments, allowing image, object and environment to operate in relation to one another.


A looping soundscape connected the different elements of the exhibition, creating an environment shaped by movement, memory, reflection and change.



Multimedia installation in a darkened gallery, with projected forest imagery and handwritten text cast across a glass display case containing rocks and organic material.
A transparent oval mirror panel carrying handwritten text hangs by cords within a darkened installation space.
Projected water patterns move across gallery walls and ceiling above a black geometric artwork with circular openings and a smaller dark wall piece.



Water functioned throughout the exhibition as both physical substance and symbolic language. Appearing as liquid, reflection, ice and projected image, it became a way of considering emotional movement, transition and release.


Volcanic stone, found objects and other natural materials grounded the work in place, while also carrying symbolic and bodily associations. Rather than treating landscape as something represented from a distance, the installation brought material elements of the environment directly into the work.



A mound of dark volcanic material is encircled by small glowing candles, with projected imagery and artworks displayed on the surrounding walls. A flat grey stone bearing handwritten text rests among rounded pebbles and pieces of dried seaweed.





Bring subconscious now into the fold

Emotions forward which are old

The reasons why we act that way

The past can rule our future day







A flat grey stone bearing handwritten text rests among rounded pebbles and pieces of dried seaweed.


Audience Participation


At the centre of the exhibition was a participatory sculptural installation resembling a volcanic landscape. Visitors were invited to anonymously write an experience, emotion or burden they wished to release and place it within the work.


The handwritten notes were later frozen into blocks of ice and gradually returned to the installation through a sequence of performances. As the ice melted, the notes dissolved back into water, creating a symbolic process of acknowledgement, transformation and release.


By the conclusion of the exhibition, more than seventy contributions had been made. The participatory process transformed the installation into a collective site of reflection, allowing individual experiences to enter a shared material cycle.


Following the exhibition, the collected writings were returned to the shoreline. Placed beneath the sand and left to the movement of the tide, they were gradually reclaimed by the sea, completing the cycle of acknowledgement, release and return that lay at the centre of the work.


Folded handwritten notes contributed by visitors float on the surface of a shallow oval pool bordered by wet seaweed and dark stones.


Questions of participation, reflection, memory, transformation and the relationship between material landscape and internal experience would continue to reappear across later works.