Museum of Migration

A large piece of work made in the first year of my Masters Degree (summer 2009) A vintage cabinet containing eight drawers, each housing a museum-like display about things that migrate through my garden ...

Drawer 1 - Swallow Drawer - Flick book showing the demise of the swallows that migrate from our garden each year. When we first moved to the farm there were hundreds of swallows gathering on the wires over the garden each August, they sat on the wires like the notes on sheet music chattering away as if they were deciphering the messages going through the telegraph lines.

Drawer 2 - The Seed Drawer - All these seeds were collected from my garden, everything from poisonous white bryony to tomato pips, from acorns to grass seeds. The root is a water iris from our pond. Seeds have many wonderful ways to migrate through the garden, every year I marvel at the soft white snow storm when the catkins from the white willow burst.

Drawer 3 - The Cuckoo Drawer - Everyone knows that the cuckoo lays her eggs in other birds nests - but did you know that cuckoos lay different coloured egg - which ever colour egg she was hatched from is the colour she will always lay, so she has to find a bird who lays the same colour egg as she does! Those are the sort of things that are written on the bundle of green papers tied up with ribbon.

Drawer 4 - The Shard Drawer - lots of pieces of pottery have been found on our land, although the town has had many roman finds all these shards are a bit more modern than that. In the back garden I still often find smalls pieces of delicate blue and white china popping up through the grass.

Drawer 5 - The Amphibian Drawer - soon after we moved in we built a utility room between the house and shed wall, the following spring we found lots of frogs, toads, lizards and newts in it - apparently that piece of our land was a migration route for these little critters. I am happy to say that gradually over the years they found an alternative route on the other side of the buildings!

Drawer 6 - The Stone Drawer - the meadow at the back was a quarry once so we have a lot of stones, my family have collected stones with holes in them for many years. In this drawer I threaded some together to make a stone-age man, I even found an arrow head for him to hold. Other stones have fossils and some have interesting markings such as owl faces and even a question mark!

Drawer 7 - The Snail Drawer - I found all these snail shells around the farm yard, I was and buffed up all the shells before placing them in this grid. One day when I was in our back garden I noticed a stream of snails making their way diagonally across it - apparently they were all males on the hunt for a female! 

Drawer 8 - The Ghost Drawer - we have been living in the old farm since summer 2003, the ghost made itself known to us very quickly, although there have been a few tricks played on us (including the vacuum cleaner being wrenched out of my hands and thrown backwards into a mirror) we are happy to share our home with him/her.