Di McGhee is a visual artist with a background in public art and socially engaged projects. Her site-specific installations respond to the immediate surroundings, often utilising or inspired by found and reclaimed materials. Her work presents environmental themes and issues such as climate change, pollution, erosion and adaptation on a public scale. She is an established artist, art educator, and researcher, exhibiting her work internationally.
Practice-based research themes include those explored and experienced while creating site-specific installations. These create a dialogue on ecology, adaptation and environmental issues, and the process-based problems encountered while working in alternative sites. She is interested in developing responsive work and mapping the making process of the ecological and participatory artist. Experiencing the environment and working with the elements is an emerging theme in her work and this provides intricate insights into the relationship between the human interaction with and the notion of our navigation through the environment.
The Carline Thistle
The Carline thistle is a spiny biennial plant that can be found on dry, chalk grassland. They are composite flower heads, consisting of brown florets (tiny flowers) surrounded by a fringe of golden bracts (leaf-like structures). In the bright sunshine, they glisten silver and gold.
Cumbria Wildlife Trust
Flow
‘Rehydration Patch’ by Di McGhee.
During a research trip to the Duddon Estuary, I noticed a small thistle-like flower that seemed to be thriving in the barren landscape of a post-industrial landscape. On a further visit, a boat trip around the Duddon, I experienced the power and unpredictability of the tide. Absorbing the experience through new viewpoints provided me with the visual cues I would need to make an installation. From a crouched vantage position, submerged in the colours and components of the safety gear, I perched with a personal feeling of unease about the forthcoming trip. These moments would be significant factors in the development of my response to this project. I set about conducting experiments to create a unit that would represent the vulnerability of the Carline thistle and be influenced by colours and fastenings I was up close to on the boat trip, elements that looked after me. I was also interested in the rituals of preparation before, during, and after the journey by the boat crew; rehydrating on return was an essential part of the post-trip care. Flow was installed on an inlet of marshland on the estuary. During the installation the tide progressed hastily leading to an intervention that created a tension between the tide and the work, highlighting the power of the tide and the fragility of the ecology.
Installation images
Duddon research and the making of the installation
Photos by Di McGhee. Click on images to enlarge.
Making the work prior to installation. Click to enlarge.
