Sacred Ecologies: Embodied research and video development.
This video offers an early exploration of the visual direction I intend to develop through this project. This is my first experimentation with video, expanding on a collage based process that has developed within my creative practice for over 10 years, when I first began assembling found materials and layered compositions as a way of working with limited resources.
All footage was recorded over the past six months using a second-hand handheld digital camera across Salford and Manchester, as well as Nepal and India. The audio track is a field recording captured at the sacred site of Pashupatinath in Kathmandu.
This piece acts as a proof of concept for how image, sound and place may interact during the Research and Development phase. Through layered landscapes, field recordings and abstract visual compositions, I am beginning to explore how moving image can communicate the ecological and spiritual relationships at the centre of this project.
The work intentionally embraces an experimental and abstract approach to storytelling, attempting to express the more intangible aspects of the sacred ecological themes I am investigating.
Portrait of Glenn Coe in the Scottish Highlands, exploring nature and specifically mountains as deities, worship able, non-different to the temple.
Portrait of Michael James. A chance meeting with this world-renowned scholar, widely regarded as a leading authority on the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi. He spent twenty years living in Tiruvannamalai translating the saint’s writings from classical Tamil into English. This encounter helped spark the development of this project, and I am grateful that he has kindly agreed to contribute to the research phase.
Light upon the waves in Corralejo Harbour, Fuerteventura. I love this image because it encapsulates what I try to express in my work: light as a vehicle of the divine. In this transient moment, never to be repeated, light reflected on the water becomes a portrait of the energy that animates all living beings.
Portrait of Michelle at Salford Precinct. Returning to Salford after time away, I began to see the place differently. Michelle told me she comes here every day to feed the birds, often keeping one perched on her shoulder. She described it as the most beautiful place in the world to her. In that moment I recognised a quiet form of nature connection within an urban environment, and felt honoured that she allowed me to make this portrait.
Captured during La Fiesta del Santa María del Carmen in Fuerteventura, this image shows two young girls blowing conch shells as part of a procession welcoming the Virgin Mary. Witnessing this moment revealed parallels between spiritual practices in the East and West. The conch shell, used to purify energy before a deity is honoured, echoed rituals I have encountered in Hindu traditions. With chanting, music and the statue later bathed in the sea, the atmosphere felt closer to nature worship than conventional Catholic ceremony. Experiences like this have shaped the thinking behind this R+D project.
Portrait of Sadhu Aditya Giri at the Maha Kumbh Mela, January 2025. Aditya has been a close collaborator and mentor for the past two years. He has lived as a renunciate for fourteen years, including long periods in the wilderness with no possessions. His spiritual practice and deep relationship with nature form a central focus of this project, and he will collaborate with me during the research and experimental development of the video work.
Canopy of woodland in Macclesfield. The patterns of nature are truly remarkable, like a rich and intricate tapestry. Our ancestors began creating art to honour the divinity they perceived within the natural world, not through the extractive relationship we have since developed, but through a symbiotic one. A way of seeing that understood we are not separate from nature, but part of it.