Report by Rebecca Faulkner, AER artist in residence at GroundWork Gallery, Norfolk, 2021.
Foregrounding
I came to the AER residency with a specific focus on sand mining and extraction with a desire to relocate this research to the context of West Norfolk. My prior knowledge of sand-mining was formed predominantly through desk-based research, coupled with lingering outside a sand and aggregates wharf in South East London. I had been fascinated with this landscape of industry since I first cycled along the Thames path in September 2020, yet it had been impossible to get on the other side of the wall. Therefore, my thesis relied heavily on drawing conclusions based on observations and assumptions and fragmented conversations.
Founded by Veronica Sekules, GroundWork Gallery has been dedicated to art and the environment since its inception in 2016. EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss is one of many programmes that attempt to connect contemporary art with global environmental concerns in King’s Lynn. The AER residency, hosted by GroundWork Gallery as part of EXTRACTION, was an opportunity to finally be on the side of Industry. In the first week of the residency, I witnessed extraction processes up close and heard both personal musings and factual information from those who work in this reality every day.
As the only UK participant in EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, working with GroundWork enabled me to participate in “a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention seek[ing] to provoke societal change by exposing and interrogating the negative social and environmental consequences of industrialised natural resource extraction”. As the third and final resident artist, the end of my residency coincided with GroundWork's exhibition opening. This timeframe shifted my expectations of what I was able to produce whilst on location, liberating and enabling me to throw myself into the process and forget the outcome as such.
Situating
My experience of King's Lynn before the residency was mainly skirting round it on the A149/A17. A single trip aged 16 rendered this town an undiscovered territory. My arrival was somewhat of a strange experience: growing up ‘around the corner’ in North Norfolk, Lynn was an alien part of my home county. I had assumed it would feel just like home. However, the built environment was quite different - more industrial than my agricultural references and striking in the abundance of varied stones. Carstone, for instance, is a unique sandstone to this area. The ruddy gingerbread colour, a record of the rich iron deposits laid down millennia ago.
After a welcome from Veronica, the gallery owner, and settling into my [artist] bedsit it seemed I should familiarise myself in the best way I know how - walking. For me, walking is a performative and most basic act and an action at the heart of my practice.
Anecdotally, behind the gallery, I stumbled upon a pile of construction materials. I couldn’t help but see a recipe card of man-made delight. Here, laid bare, are the components or the invisible elements that construct the built environment, yet most people would pay this pile no attention.
A Trip down Ferry Lane
Through the alleyway
Dust rains down
Sitting
Waiting
Missed by a minute
Man in the water
Pushing
Body and boat in equilibrium
The motor starts
Aboard he climbs
The sun beats strongly
Sweating
The current flows strongly
Resisting
Lapping at silty sandbanks
Secreting
Ferried across the great Ouse
They strike the Jetty
They get off
Others get on
They sit
They wait
Ferried across the great Ouse
They strike the Jetty
Finally, my turn
Patiently
I board
I ask Do you only take cash?
Yes mate
Damn.
On the edge of the Fens and south of The Wash, King’s Lynn lies on the silty banks of the Great Ouse, a major tidal river. Ferried across, to the banks of West Lynn, I look back beyond the Great Ouse, to the industrial estates of King’s Lynn. My fascination with the grain silos attract the attention of two old boys, out for their daily walk. The proceed to tell me their life story and in turn I tell them why I am here, they think it sounds fascinating. Together we walk 1km of the 230 stretch that make up the Ouse, heading toward The Wash.
I wonder…
Where does the sea end and the land begin?
Walking around Lynn you begin to understand and trace the material history of a place.
Limestone, sedimentary rock predominantly formed of Calcium carbonate (CaCO3), from the other side of the Fens, in Lincolnshire and Northants. Transported by barges traversing the numerous dykes, drains and rivers of the Fens.
Flint, a smooth black sedimentary cryptocrystalline formed of mineral quartz and encased in layers of Chalk (Calcium carbonate). Similar in composition to glass, flint is either utilised knapped or unknapped, the term knap comes from the Dutch/German word krappen, to crack. Before bricks were common place and without good available building stone Flint was combined with stone or rubble and bound with lime mortar.
Rubble, imported or recycled. Trading with partners across most of northern and eastern Europe, Medieval ships coming into port without a load were too light to sail. Ballast (broken stone and gravel) weighed the ships down - discharged at the port to take goods back, the rubble was harnessed as a building material.
Researching
The first week of the residency was in research mode - predominantly through site visits to working and disbanded quarries as well as geological phenomena.
Day 01 Site Visit
A quarry
The first site visit was to various quarries operated by Middleton Aggregates in East Bilney, a small family run quarry managed by Peter Lemon. More than anything I was amazed by the landscape we found ourselves in, more desert like than the Norfolk I know. It was here that I first witnessed the iron deposits which colour much of the sand and sandstone in the area, I had no idea Norfolk had once been so iron rich. Transported in a huge truck we roamed around this foreign landscape, witnessing the rusty tones of iron obis bonded carestone and coarse silica sands in to the finer, soft sands perfect for airport runways. Despite geographically occupying a much larger terrain than Angerstein Wharf in SE London, Middleton operates on a much smaller scale. Middelton’s processes 700,000 tonnes of sand and aggregates annually compared to 2.8 million tonnes from Angerstein and neighbouring Murphy’s wharf.
Is this a wasteland?
Middleton Aggregates also deal with construction waste recycling, the most popular material sold back to the construction industry is Type 1 Crushed concrete. Most Type 1 becomes “hardcore”, ie. infill material for roads or “placed within the confines of a building foundation” (Longworth, 2011, p.1.). Type 1 crushed concrete is commonly used as “a replacement for granite or limestone due to their limited availability and subsequent high cost, crushed concrete does the same job but at more workable rates” (Middleton Aggregates, nd.). But as I marvelled at these former building elements, I wondered how construction waste could be better utilised? With up to 300,000 new homes needed a year in the UK, there is enormous demand for construction materials. 2.6 billion bricks will be used this year, 600 million of which are imports” (Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, 2020). Alongside this, EU legislation means that 70% of all building materials need to recycled and 0 to landfill. Waste handlers can provide manufacturers with inert material which can be turned into bricks, tiles and much more - with the possibility of being as recyclable as the aggregates that made them.
The last port of call was fossil-hunting in Blackborough End clay pit with expert geologist, Tim Holt-Wilson. This clay was rich in bitumens, but useless for brick making and is predominantly used for clay capping on waste piles, isolating the underlying waste from surface water infiltration. A sample of clay, with ammonites taken back to the gallery immediately began to condense in its specimen bag. I began to see this specimen as a metaphor for how we think of these materials being inert, ripe for our taking, but their chemical composition continues to shift and change - they are living and breathing, just as we are.
An encounter with a geological wall.
Moving to Wolferton Railway Cutting and scrambling up a path I was able to track millions of years of the earth’s history with, Tim Holt-Wilson a local geologist. Together, on this geological wall, we traced layers of time - from Leziate Beds (135 million BP) beneath Dersingham Beds (127 million BP) with moments of movement, calm and erosion all mutely recorded and laid bare. These raw, finite materials are continually extracted for the built environment to create new human walls.
On Becoming a boulder
My body aches enormously
Heavy
A lump of Silcrete
Bashed and ground down
Reformed into a dull lump
Of Sedimentary Rock
Compressed
Subsiding
Eroded
Shifting sands
Migrating Grains
Displaced
Discombobulated
Bent over
Feet swollen and throbbing
Lungs polluted with dusty air
Hard
Laborious work
Unseen
Unvalued
Unknown
Day 02 Site Visit
A solo visit to the geological phenomena that is Hunstanton Cliffs. Traversing the length of the beach I explored the layers of time, laid to rest 93-112 million years ago when this land was at the bottom of the ocean.
From top to bottom:
White Chalk - 99 million BP - purity suggests it was laid down far from land (no debris staining it) - mainly constitutes prehistoric plankton
Red chalk - 99-108 million BP - very rare limestone, the red colouration comes from the presence of limonite (type pf iron)
Carstone - 108-112 milling BP - sand particles bonded together with iron oxide, which gives it us gingerbread colouration
And strewn along the sand we find boulders from the anthropocene, former pavers, walls and slabs resting on the shore. Silent records of our human centric ways, sand and gravel bound together with cement - waiting to be eroded down to grains, their material makeup a new geological phenomena.
It is a strangely liminal place - between cliff and grain.
IRON
SEEPS
BLEEDS
PATINAS
THE
PURE
FINE
CHALK
THEY
MEET
AND
MELD
TOGETHER
FORMING
SOMETHING
NEW
SOMETHING
RARE
A
UNION
UNTIL
SILT
BECOMES
THEM
A
MARRIAGE
OF
A
MILLENNIA
Day 03 Site Visit
On the third day of site visits, I was shown around Sibelco’s silica sand quarry in Leziate by Quarry Supervisor, Alan Bland, who has worked there for 36 years. As the largest silica sand quarry UK, it feeds the glass manufacturing industry. Once a glass furnace starts burning, it can’t stop for 10-15 years, requiring a continual consumption of silica sand.
A single quarry lasts for about 20 years - with one lone digger working 11 hours a day non-stop. 4 vehicles, capable of holding 44 tonnes of sand, transport the sand from the quarry to be processed in a 12 minute cycle, also continually for 11 hours: meaning 10,000 tonnes of sand are excavated every day.
For glass manufacturing, silica needs to be 98% pure and this sand is rich in iron. Quarried sand is sieved, classified, attrited, treated, floated and electromagnetically separated to liberate the iron. This is a 24/7 operation, 3690 tonnes of sand every day and reeking of sulphur and sodium hydrosulphite, which can spontaneously combust when it is wet.
Most of the processed sand is transported via railhead (and a few lorries) up to Yorkshire. Historically sand would go up and coal would come down, in a poetic material exchange. If it wasn’t for aerial photography, and a few sign posts you would have no idea this landscape of industry was sitting in and amongst agricultural fields.
Day 04 Site Visit
I went to visit Mobile Concrete Suppliers in Ketteringham. With sand from Norfolk, migrating Granite from Norway and displaced Cement from Portugal and Spain this was some pretty European concrete. It was a truly fascinating process to witness - immersed in the mixing and measuring realities. But we can’t ignore the reality of this consuming and polluting industry.
Consuming
Sand is the most abundant resource (other than air and water), yet we are running out, harnessing grains at a faster rate than they naturally erode. From asphalt to abrasives, bricks, clay, concrete, elastics, filtration, fracking, glass, microchips, metal casting, moulds, mortar, oil spills, paint, plastics, sandbags, sandpaper and toothpaste - sand - this wonderful, granular material is the constructor of the modern world.
National Planning Policy Framework, published in July 2021, actively promotes the continued use of “minerals to provide the infrastructure, buildings, energy and goods that the country needs” (UK Parliament, p.59.). What is clear is that our Governments approach is to create policy or material considerations founded on economy rather than environmental or social sustainability, which I find problematic. The long term conservation and continued use of finite resources seem contradictory, not taking into consideration how we are using up many of these resources at a faster rate than natural production - let alone the chemical treatment that they often have to go through to be viable for construction purposes.
We are currently using up the renewable resources of 1.7 Earths. The global demand for concrete (a mix of sand, aggregates and cement) is growing exponentially. Every tonne of cement emits up to 622 kg of carbon dioxide (roughly) 7% of global CO2 emissions (Brogan, 2021). The worldwide price of construction sand has increased by 50% in the last decade. Globally, we now consume 50 billion metric tons of sand (and gravel) every year, amounting to 18kg per person per day (United Nations Environment Programme, 2019)… sand, cement and concrete are metaphors for modern-day consumption. The concrete industry is both global and local at the same time - with most concrete used within a 250-mile radius of where it is produced (Solida, n.d.)
Our built environment is in a constant state of flux, a continual process of construction and deconstruction. The residency got me thinking about the legacy of building and obsession with longevity. We are extracting and exploiting materials that have taken millions of years to form, perhaps we should be turning to those which we can grow and return to the ground. Hemp for instance is a fascinating material. industrial hemp can can be used for Phytoremediation of contaminated soil. Phyto’ means plants, and ‘remediation’ meaning to heal. Hemp has to be processed to separate “seed, fibre and shiv (the chopped woody core), it can be used to make hempcrete (non structural) and fibreboards for cladding. Hemp fibreboards use 5.7 x less energy than aluminium, 2.6 x less energy than bitumen plastic and 1.5 x less energy than galvanised steel. Hemp also “captures carbon as it grows, absorbing it from our atmosphere and converting it to biomass” (Margent Farm, n.d.) Design for disassembly should also become part of architectural practice. If we systematically sort and grade materials during demolition we can repurpose them, giving them a new life (Blander, 2019).
Digesting
The week spent visiting sites was rather a sensory experience, more than just a visual feast for the eyes. I was continually confronted with the putrid smell of sulphur, musty, peaty and earthy. In working quarries my lungs were filled with dust; my body and boots bringing home remnants with me. Clambering onto machinery I was vibrated, washed and sieved like a piece of aggregate and scaling piles of rubble I felt fossils and stones shift under foot.
But what I found most striking about the experience was the notion of time. How beginning to understand the rhythms of Earth's deep past was revelatory, provoking my thought on how we can shift toward a more sustainable future. The environment I found myself in intersected everything from deep time to a millisecond. Millenia of migrating grains and shifting sands unearthed in a matter of moments, to be processed over a number of months, to be reconstituted into new Anthropocenic materials only to be demolished, crushed and graded as infill. As humans, we are replicating geological process, but on a much shorter timescale, instead of waves pushing bodies of silica millennia ago, we use diggers, washer, lorries and mixers - to haul grains across the world to form new lands, to bind them in legions of concrete and asphalt, to melt them down and purify them so that we can see.
In my visits to the two working quarries, I had expected to find scarred landscapes and bad practices. However, I was shocked to learn that the land-restoration processes of decommissioned quarries actually leads to more biodiversity. As Alan Bland put it to me - quarrying methods have not changed, but the politics have. Before a spade can even go in the ground, companies must agree on the reclamation plan with the local council and the landowner. However, we cannot negate what this energy consumptive industry feeds into on a global scale.
However, even if regulations in the UK protect and restore land, globally, non-human life is damaged, land and people continue to be exploited. We are exporting the damage to somewhere else with looser laws and less privileged citizens.
Alongside the two previous residents, Kaitlin Ferguson and Shaun Fraser, the findings - photographs, notes, maps, specimens - of my short residency were presented at GroundWork Gallery from 20.09 - 04.10.2021.
Landscaping
A re-appropriated laser pointer lens, embedded in a perspex sheet and a few nuts and bolts is all I needed to create a DIY digital microscope and capture a million miniature landscapes. The microscope was presented as part of the exhibition, for visitors to capture their very own miniature landscapes.
Microgeologies
Mapping
Fragments: A map of a brief history of sand, presented as 12 separate fragments.
Microquarry: Minuscule mapping of the process to extract iron from silica sand.
Thanking
I would like to thank Lucy Orta and Camilla Palestra (UAL Centre for Sustainable Fashion) and Veronica Sekules (GroundWork Gallery) for awarding me the residency. Cat Mahmoud (Post-Grad Community) for broadcasting my journey on the internet. Many thanks also to Kaiitlin Ferguson for sharing her residency experience, Karen Ing for the pint and chats, genius-geologist Tim Holt-Wilson, Jack Heslop for imparting his knowledge on coastal erosion, Peter Lemon and all at Middleton Aggregates for the fantastic tour and also Alan Bland and Sibelco Group.
Read Rebecca's sucessful proposal
More about the AER Residency
The Art for the Environment Residency Programme (AER) provides UAL graduates with the opportunity to apply for a 2 to 4 week fully funded residency at one of our internationally renowned host institutions, to explore concerns that define the 21st century – biodiversity, environmental sustainability, social economy and human rights.
Founded in 2015, internationally acclaimed artist Professor Lucy Orta, UAL Chair of Art for the Environment – Centre for Sustainable Fashion, launched the programme in partnership with international residency programmes and UAL Post-Grad Community.