Wetherall, S (2026) Every contact leaves a trace: an investigation into the potential of ceramic and print process to extend understanding of the temporal, material and transient in landscape. PhD thesis, Bath Spa University.
Preview |
Text
17832.pdf Repository Terms Apply. Download (222MB) | Preview |
Abstract
This interdisciplinary, practice-based research investigates the material and conceptual connections between art making and landscape, through ceramic, print, and alternative photographic processes, centred on the Mendip landscape where I live. The methodological framework is indexical and processual rather than mimetic, taking the form of an iterative network of enmeshed and repetitive practices, predicated on the proposal that material engagement, memory, and historical inquiry operate as methods for thinking through time and place (see Methodologies chapter). The thesis adopts a polyvocal form, moving between research-based, autoethnographic and poetic registers of writing, reflecting the mutable relationship between walking, writing and material practice. Grounded in repeated walking, dwelling and field-based experimentation, the work responds to what I understand as a Writan landscape (from the Anglo-Saxon writan: to scratch, tear or score), where traces of past human activity, environmental processes and memory persist within place. This approach acknowledges landscape as a dynamic, unstable, and time-bound site - continually shaped by both human and non-human forces - predicated on an understanding that most people left no written or archival trace. By foregrounding fragility, impermanence, and trace, the work resists dominant narratives of landscape as stable, picturesque, or consumable. Engagement with landscape is not extractive, but slow, embodied, and process-led, exploring the ethical implications of contact, use and neglect. The resulting work reflects an internalised understanding of place formed through duration and attentiveness, as I situate myself within the landscape as both participant and witness. Archival research and oral histories actively inform material decisions in the studio regarding what is recorded, what is erased, and what remains partial. Within the studio, landscape is not merely represented but re-enacted through material behaviour, creating a collaboration between place and process and demonstrating how material practice can operate as a mode of landscape enquiry and knowledge production. Print becomes a temporal act and a carrier of concept, while ceramic and photographic processes function as a responsive, unstable archive, articulating material processes as systems through which we might attend more carefully to landscape. The research establishes a methodology for understanding landscape through material practice. The interweaving of walking, writing, print and ceramic processes enables reciprocity through practice between artist and landscape, creating a form of collaboration between place, material and making. This integration of place and process is driven by emotional engagement. It positions making as a form of knowing - one that acknowledges instability, embraces uncertainty, and recognises that every interaction with landscape leaves a trace.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | PhD by Practice; interdisciplinary; art-making; landscape; ceramics; print; photographic processes; Mendips; archival research; oral histories; material practice. |
| Divisions: | Bath School of Art, Film and Media |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Jun 2026 12:58 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Jun 2026 12:58 |
| URN: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/17832 |
 |
Request a change to this item or report an issue |
 |
Update item (repository staff only) |
Tools
Tools
