column as invasive species, 2024, unfired parian clay and dried giant hogweed stalks
Tree for Column: Mapping the relationship between colonialism and climate through the built and natural heritage of the ‘second city of the empire’
This project examines the relationship between colonialism and the climate crisis in the context of the built and natural heritage of Glasgow, the ‘second city of the empire’. Situated in both visual art and heritage ecologies, the research turns to the city’s neoclassical stone buildings and green spaces to map this entanglement through a practice-based methodology that centres the organic and architectural form of the column. The project will locate these sites in the ‘continuum of extraction’ (I. J. Brown, 2023), offering new critical perspectives on the city’s colonial past, neoliberal present and ecological future, through site writing, speculation and sculpture.