collecting mountains

Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains (installation view), sound, ceramics, photography and mixed media. 220cm x 200cm x 150cm
Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains (installation detail): Book Mountain, stoneware ceramic, books (mountain books not depicted), 50cm x 60cm x 35cm

Collecting Mountains is a multidisciplinary installation created for EARTH: Four Elements exhibition at Creative Space. The project includes sound, photography, ceramics, plants, books relating to mountains, topographical maps of mountainous areas, domestic furniture, bricks and volcanic rocks.   The sound element was a soothing Mountain Meditation repeated continuously. It was created by Wendy Wood, University of Derby, as part of a nursing workshop on compassion focussed therapy.     Collecting Mountains reflects upon our complex and contradictory interrelationship with geology and our passive observations of the altered ecologies of the earths surface as we go about our day to day lives.     The work investigates mountains as a cultural construct upon which we project our desires for conquest, escape from the everyday, for spiritual fulfillment, our thirst for exploration and aspirational dreams. They fulfil key physical and psychological human needs yet we transform them irrevocably via land acquisition, large scale landscaping, mining and architectural interventions.  

Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains (installation detail), Upside Down Mountain, stoneware ceramic, metal stand, plant, 180cm x 55cm x 55cm
Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains (installation detail), Slices of Mountains, stoneware ceramic, 16 x 45 x 20 cm
Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains (installation detail): Hold, stoneware ceramic, 35 x 25 x 22 cm
Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains (installation detail), Shadowlands, stoneware ceramic, 25 x 20 x 20 cm