Ellie Davies new series Ebb & Flow turns her attention to the The South West Coast Path and
the South Dorset Ridgeway, ancient trails that stretch from Dorset in the east to Cornwall in the far southwest of England. For millennia these natural elevated byways have been critically important to local people. With expansive views across the Jurassic landscape to the sea beyond, these highpoints still evoke the ancient communities who used them as vantage points and safe routes through hostile lands and as sacred destinations for religious rites and burials.
Long barrows, burial mounds, stone circles and the hillforts of Chalbury and Maiden Castle date from the Neolithic to the Bronze Ages, rivalling Stonehenge and Avebury in historical importance. Standing in these ancient locations the past is tangibly close, but even in these protected landscapes human impact can be seen everywhere. Plastic on the beaches, nets on the shore, dead seabirds and fish, farm runoff and sewage outflows, moving from land into rivers and from rivers to the sea.
Like the manmade environmental pollutants, the swirling and unnatural looking cloudscapes in these images are (intentionally) artificial forms, out of place against the backdrop of ancient naturallandscapes. Made by throwing and scattering organic liquids into water, the motion draws out tendrils and creates swirling shapes. These false clouds are suspended and stretched across the sky – thunderclouds, mists and storms that don’t belong. A stark reminder of the climate emergency, they foreshadow the ecological concerns of climate change against an ancient natural world teetering on the edge.
