Kingsgate Takeover – Tom Sewell

My research during this residency covered knot-making and rope-work, tipi building and ideas of shelter and construction of ritual structures, medieval visions of apocalypse, prehistoric cups, human relationships to nature through food and the presence of time on the decay of fruits and vegetables, ritual structures, acts of making from wood, animism and panpsychism.

Custard apple.

A failed arch.

Cotton dyed with fermented red cabbage, lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda.

Cotton dyed with fermented red cabbage.

Cotton dyed with fermented red cabbage, lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda.

Horse — Coppiced willow poles, estovers, rope, eggs, stones and cotton dyed with fermented red cabbage, lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda.

Horse (detail) — Coppiced willow poles, estovers, rope, eggs, stones and cotton dyed with fermented red cabbage, lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda.

Estovers.

(4) Taking or moving any substance in or from the Forest, save with the previous written consent of the Conservators, PROVIDED that this byelaw shall not apply to the collection in any one day of no more than 12 kg of loose, dead or driftwood, of which no piece shall exceed 5 cm in diameter and 91 cm in length.

From the Byelaws of Epping forest

‘Some being of the opinion of Thales, that water was the originall of all things, thought it most equall to submit unto the principle of putrefaction, and conclude in a moist relentment’

Thomas Browne