In addition to the series about invasive plant species, I am working on a series of pictures exploring the fascination with birds' egg collecting in the Victorian/ Edwardian period and the way in which we view this now illegal 'hobby' today.
Both series will be shown in Rochdale in March under the joint title UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
At the turn of the century children were encouraged to hunt for eggs and build a collection to connect with and learn about nature, over the 20th Century the hobby became a crime as legislation in the 1950s made it illegal to trade and collect eggs, and since the 1980s it has been against the law to even possess them. However, if you search on ebay you can still find eggs for collections and while most are replicas, there have been recent incidents of real eggs sold as 'replicas' to collectors using code language to attract potential buyers. From time to time headlines are hit with the exposure of people with enormous collections of eggs (even a former policeman!).
The work will explore the motivation of collection and its consequences.