Very occasionally, ancient pieces of timber have landed on our nearest beach (one such was used in ‘Courtship Display’ in the 2012 exhibition). I realised where it had come from after the tremendous tempests of winter 2014, which drastically ripped out vast chunks of compacted peat/sand seabed, formed over millennia, all along our shore, exposing the remains of a prehistoric forest.

In my store was a fantastic, jagged-toothed tree stump, severely storm-savaged, dramatic as a bolt of lightening, measuring roughly 60 cm across by 75 cm high. Adding three birds of highly characterful fragments of driftwood, two revolving 360 degrees, one clambering up, they appear to be fossils, awakening from a 5,000 year sleep.