Upon a Granite Hill, Gazing
Upon a Granite Hill, Gazing (2026) is a series of photographic works made for the group exhibition ‘The Radnor Lily’, co-curated by Caroline Allen, Rachael Fisher & ecologist Andy Shaw. The show brings together artists, poets and ecologists working in a variety of media to respond to the Radnor lily (Gagea bohemica), a rare species in the U.K. growing only upon Stanner Rocks, a nature reserve located in Radnorshire, east Wales.
Local artists from the Welsh-English boarders were invited to a series of site visits at Stanner Rocks by Andy Shaw, to observe the rare lily in bloom and to understand the wider ecosystem in which it lives. As a perennial, the lily is only visible during January to March as it emerges from dormancy to bloom. Its preference for Stanner Rocks appears to derive from the location’s identity as a microclimate, the granite rock, thin acidic soil and south-facing aspects mimicking a typical Mediterranean climate.
Through the project’s early stages, themes of communal action were common threads. Due to lack of funding, Stanner Rocks is conserved by a small group of volunteer ecologists who look after and guide visitors around the site due to its unstable terrain. As a small group of artists whose collective action aim to raise awareness of the Radnor lily, I began to think about the ways in which the plant is sustained through wider ecological networks that include humans and their cultural interactions with plant life.
To represent this idea in images, I collected photographs of the lily from fellow exhibiting artists who participated in the initial site visit, turning them into a series of glass plate cyanotypes. The glass plates were then coupled with cyanotype prints of Stanner Rocks which depict the surrounding landscape: the plants, trees, rocks and mosses that made up the lily’s wider ecosystem. Together, they combine the collaborative traces of human and plant interactions with the lily that support and preserve its life.
Above: cyanotypes on Langton watercolour paper depicting the lower aspects of Stanner Rocks, where our collective first encounter with the lily was present. They show both micro and macro visions of the surrounding area to demonstrate the varience and vibrancy of the lily’s surrounding ecosystem. The smaller prints are toned with green tea.
Above: forestscape of the trail leading to the top of Stanner Rocks. Green tea toned cyanotype on Landton watercolour paper.
Above: scanned cyanotypes on glass depicting the Radnor lily. All photographs were gifted to me by other participating artists as part of the group show ‘The Radnor Lily’.
Above: a triptych of a rock photographed in three different configurations and collected from the site of Stanner Rocks.