vc
In response to the workshops and the discussions we shared, my own practice has begun to reflect the ways in which the forest is experienced as a collection of personal moments rather than a fixed or singular landscape. The young people spoke about the forest through memories, routines, and emotions, as a series of places shaped by experience, transition, and change, and this has informed how I am approaching my work.
I have been exploring the idea of the forest as a network of memory points and in-between spaces, where paths are not only physical routes but also markers of personal journeys. Taking inspiration from the way participants identified meaningful locations and unofficial landmarks, I have been working with maps as a way of tracing these subjective relationships to place, considering how they can hold multiple narratives at once rather than a single, authoritative view.
Alongside this, I am using cyanotype processes to expose soil/matter collected from different sites across the forest. The soil acts as both trace and presence, embedding the physical landscape directly into the work. The process allows each location to leave its own mark, creating a visual record that sits somewhere between documentation and memory.
Through this process, I am thinking about how the forest can be understood as something layered and continually shifting, shaped not only by geography, but by the accumulation of lived experience. The voices of the young people remain central, not as something I am illustrating, but as a way of re-seeing the landscape itself. Their reflections have opened up a more attentive way of working, where small, often overlooked details, a path taken every day, a place to pause, a feeling attached to a location become significant.
vanessacollingridge.com