kerry morrison // Profile

I work in the public realm responding to environmental issues and public concerns within a given locale. Conversation and collaboration lie at the heart of my working processes. It is through conversation, talking and listening, that my work evolves. I often work in collaboration with botanists and environmental scientists, which, combined with reading scientific research papers, enables me to have a broader understanding of the world in which I live. Working with and in communities, in collaboration with specialists, and in and with land, I aim to integrate the complex social and economic dimensions of ecology into process led art activities to present new ways of seeing and experiencing landscapes. I am particularly interested in people’s connection to vegetation, and how we tend to value flora based on populist aesthetic values and perceived usefulness. This has lead to investigating land and plants that appear to be of a lesser value, or, be less valued: • Brownfield sites, questioning the value of these much maligned landscapes – should they be considered wastelands or are they in fact green lands; biodiverse wildlife habitats offering the potential for near-by people communities to experience nature? • Mosses, lichens, and scrub woodland – how some plants, in effect, clean the land, air, and water (we have polluted) by locking toxins within their cell structures. Biomonitoring and phytoremediation, plant accumulation of toxins, is what has brought me to SSW. This area of Scotland is rich in sphagnum moss, a moss that is commonly used by scientists as a bioindicator (it effectively traps air particles and heavy metals). To monitor air quality and air pollution a moss bag technique can be used. This allows air quality to be monitored without the need for onsite electricity. Samples from the moss bags can be collected from different locations and be taken to a laboratory for analysis. This is the concept, but the actual use of mosses as bioindicators requires a specific scientific methodology for the data collected to be considered reliable.

Artist's CV