Illusory Depth
2025. Digital video, 1000s of photographs.
Reading University Archaeology department are unearthing a royal early medieval monastery that’s been hidden beneath Cookham for over 1,000 years. It stood there in the eighth and ninth centuries.
This project began with immersion — I was invited to the Cookham Abbey Dig site, and spent time capturing over a thousand photographs, guided by the surroundings and the archaeology. A cheese press fragment evoked timeless human needs for food and pleasure. A wooden bodkin needle evoked craft and hand skills.
My film developed as I wove in period texts into the visuals and soundscape, while images of oak galls reference the ink of the lost written culture of the Abbey. The soundscape includes music from a replica of a bone flute found on site, an Anglo-Saxon bee charm to represent the human delight of food but also the ruler of the Monastery - Queen Cynethryth, a riddle of the river from the Exeter Book, and contemporary poetry by Toby Martinez de las Rivas (Floodmeadow, Faber, 2023). A meditation on time, simple pleasures, and continuity between distant centuries.
Reading University Archaeology department are unearthing a royal early medieval monastery that’s been hidden beneath Cookham for over 1,000 years. It stood there in the eighth and ninth centuries.
This project began with immersion — I was invited to the Cookham Abbey Dig site, and spent time capturing over a thousand photographs, guided by the surroundings and the archaeology. A cheese press fragment evoked timeless human needs for food and pleasure. A wooden bodkin needle evoked craft and hand skills.
My film developed as I wove in period texts into the visuals and soundscape, while images of oak galls reference the ink of the lost written culture of the Abbey. The soundscape includes music from a replica of a bone flute found on site, an Anglo-Saxon bee charm to represent the human delight of food but also the ruler of the Monastery - Queen Cynethryth, a riddle of the river from the Exeter Book, and contemporary poetry by Toby Martinez de las Rivas (Floodmeadow, Faber, 2023). A meditation on time, simple pleasures, and continuity between distant centuries.
Film stills:
Cheese press fragment
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Edge of the cheese press fragment
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Wooden needle found in the mill leat of the Abbey
