The Ground Beneath Our Feet

blackShed residency 2022

SN102222 is a site-specific exploration of materiality, human progress, and the inevitable cycle of entropy. Developed from a foundational woodland workshop in 2022, James Roseveare’s work centers on the elemental process of hand making bricks from raw earth, wood ash, and agricultural fragments harvested directly from the surrounding landscape.

The project exists across two distinct sites:

In the woodland: Vulnerable stacks of sun-dried bricks stand as markers of ancestral technology.
In the gallery: Large, imposing monoliths command the space with a physical weight that suggests a deceptive permanence.

Constructed without the forge of a kiln, these works are intentionally fragile. Whether situated in the gallery or the forest, they are “open” to their environment—destined to degrade, dissolve, and return to the soil. By using the brick as a primal “unit of progress,” Roseveare challenges our perception of landscape, suggesting that the most honest expression of human achievement is not what we build to last, but what we allow to rejoin the earth.