SRG Bennett

Earth-gallery-earth (2018-23)

​​Earth-Gallery-Earth took geological data buried in online data repositories and brought it into the real world, only for it to dissolve back into the muddy morass from which it came.

The work was informed by psychogeography - writers like Guy Debord and Iain Sinclair, artists like Richard Long and my own experiments in Andalusia and at CERN. For ​​Earth-Gallery-Earth I drew a square on a map with the south west corner touching Kings Cross. I travelled to nine points on the square covering the London hinterlands I’ve known since a child, from Epping to Dagenham, Stratford to Crews Hill.

I dug the earth, sifting out ants and earwigs, lugging it back via the Tube or bus to my studio. Here I used a digital fabrication workflow to render onto the soil ecological data and geological maps I had found by delving around on various government and scientific websites.

When the nine earth tablets were exhibited in Kings Cross in 2018 viewers could read the data, but they could also see, touch and smell the matter it described. The tightly compacted soil from Highams Park, etched with the words “Thames Clay”, contrasted with the silty, sandy material inscribed “Stratford”. The glacial till from Hainault had already started breaking up before it got into the gallery.

It’s taken me five years (and a pandemic and two children) but I’ve now returned the tablets back to where they came. Baked by the sun and lashed by the rain, the earth and the data it contains has dissolved back into the dirt. There will be only one physical trace of this endeavour.