Shoal in Shards

This work grew out of beachcombing trips along the Northumberland coast, where broken shells and bleached bones lie half-buried in the sand. I began imagining an archaeological dig conducted by the tide itself, leaving only hints of the creatures that once flickered through the water. By arranging the finds in a neat grid I wanted to echo both museum drawers and the squared-off trenches of a formal excavation.

Each of the twelve panels was first coated with coarse, differently tinted mortar to mimic layers of compacted sand and silt. I then nipped opalescent glass, mother-of-pearl, and jet-black smalti into splintered slivers, letting their shapes decide whether they would become a jaw, a tail-fin, or an exposed vertebra. Because no single tile contains an entire fish, the viewer’s eye is obliged to wander, piecing the creatures together across the grid the way a palaeontologist might assemble a fossil.

As I worked, I kept thinking about what is lost and what endures. The sea breaks bodies apart, yet the glint of nacre persists long after the flesh is gone. By fixing these brittle fragments in mortar I’m asking us to remember how fragile marine life is—and how urgently it needs our care—before it, too, survives only as scattered clues in the sand.