After an astoundingly immersive week at Cortijada Los Gazquez I have been thinking about the project I began there- where it sits, how it’s installed, the scale, are things to play with. Work in progress.

I was really struck by how scarce all the things we take for granted were there. Water. If it doesn’t fall from the sky it has to be hauled from the spring in the nearest village, which is a car drive away. Electricity- wind or sun deliver it for free, otherwise it’s the combustion engine generator which delivers. This becomes the only engine you can hear in the whole valley. The silence there is otherwise so loud it made my ears ring.

So, finding a rocky outcrop surrounded by optimistic furrows of corn, I trampled some of the herbs for the week. I was situated towards the end of a run-off system of terraces which had served historically to channel water to the well. As the terraces eroded, along with the rainfall, so the well has run dry.

I placed halves of salvaged ballcocks into the earth in a pattern dictated by the contours of the hill and the bushes clinging on there. The title of the work was made even more percent as all that was collected was dust and a lizard!

Things to work on: Depth of the ‘bowls’. Precision of installation. Scale- planned rather than arbitrary.