Pocket Worlds

Artist Sylak Ravenspin invites you to take part in sphere making workshops at locations in Basildon, and at Canvey Island, where Pocket Worlds will join Estuary 2025 Commissioned artists YoHa during their Sleeping with the Deadevent at Willows Cemetery.

The culmination of the Pocket Worlds project will take the form of a fully illustrated report in the manner of a printed booklet titled Pocket Worlds: 100 Handmade Spheres to be published later in the year.

Pocket Worlds explores the variety of colours and textures comprising of different soil types currently being unearthed during an extensive field study of Essex. The work involves visiting over a hundred different sites within the 12 districts and 2 unitary boroughs, and taking samples from a number of locations at each, in order to build up a visual record of the complex interplay between natural geology and the human impact on the land over time.

Ahead of the festival dates, the artist will take part in public events such as the Estuary Exchange at Tilbury Cruise Terminal (3rd May), as well as major exhibitions like Into The Zone: Journeys in the Thames Estuary at the Beecroft Art Gallery (22nd February-11th May 2025).

Pocket Worlds aims to explore how natural additive and subtractive processes have impacted soil conditions in Essex; since the last ice age 22,000 years ago, which deposited Anglian till (boulder clay) and gravels (forming a plateau in northern Essex stretching as far south as Hornchurch); to the effects of associated isostatic recovery (continental rebound), exacerbated by climate change, that is currently impacting low-lying areas such as Tendring and Maldon; and coastal erosion at sites like the Naze, and Jaywick (which is being consumed at a rate of -4.5m/yr).

The project also aims to include how industry has transformed the county through large- scale earthworks and land reclamation exercises; from Canvey Island during the 17th century, to Wallasea Island today, where tons of soil from central London has been deposited to form a series of artificial wetlands in an attempt to restore coastal habitats.

About the artist

Sylak Ravenspine (b. 1969) is an eco-artist based at theblokhouse studios in Southend-on-Sea. His work under Inks of Essex brings together historic artefacts with locally sourced materials to create evocatively charged mark making fluids enthused with the physical properties of time and space.
His wider art practice explores our relationship to the land and to the various soil types found beneath our feet.

www.essex.ink

The Basildon workshop and dates TBC.

Image: Sylak Ravenspine, Pocket Worlds, 2025