These are my notes from April last year, as my presence began first explaining my transness with me. I’d bought a black dress just before and thrown it away, and we were about to buy our red dress, the first dress kept, and were to walk outside as ourselves in. I’d forgot that the first name I was given was Emma, and my presence was then Samantha. She then gave me the name Mary, and now it’s just our name. it’s strange and beautiful, nature is so terrifying / sublime – a singular light, where there is no other, but the life she will hold and love.
This sculpture expresses our collective need to transition to a place where human – technological, and natures’ separated ecologies are brought into a position of almost mirroring each other. In the sculpture, this need is represent by tin, sand (collected from the beach beside Marine Station) and red kelp tetrahedra, which traverse a likewise changing platform, moving from a position of alienation from each other, to one of entwinement and coexistence. The location of Marine Station, where science endeavours to help us understand and find our balance within nature, is an integral part of the meaning of the sculpture.
This sculpture was made for the High Water – Spring Tide Event, held on the 30th March in Plymouth and elsewhere. The silver foil panels are binary encoded with my daughter, Daphne Holly, and my own ages, which speaks to how climate change impacts are generational, with our children being left a world fallen into a precipice. The form expresses our technological nature and its placement, in the ocean, the need for humanity to become balanced with, and to exist within nature.
maryemmaholly.uk