In the summer of 2018, I participated in the Lumen artist residency in Atina, Italy. Lumen is an art collective that explore themes of astronomy and light, and regularly exhibit in churches around London. It aims to inspire a dialogue about how humanity understands existence. 

I researched the annual August Perseids meteor shower as inspiration for a new work. In Italy, the Perseids are known as the “tears of Saint Lawrence”, suspended in the sky but returning to earth once a year in August, on the canonical date of Saint Lawrence’s martyrdom in 258 AD. The saint is said to have been burned alive on a gridiron, resulting in a folk legend that the shooting stars are the sparks of that fire and that during the nights of August 9–10 its cooled embers appear on the ground under plants. These meteorites are known as the “coals of Saint Lawrence”. Today, Saint Lawrence is the patron saint of chefs…

After walking in the verdant forests surrounding Atina and buying huge quantities of wild chanterelle mushrooms in the town market for unctuous risottos, I began photocopying from mushroom identification books in the local library. I enlarged each photocopy many more times, resulting in abstracted black and white images which became the basis for several large scale meteorwrong collages with the title If it’s growing, it’s not a meteorite. It’s a meteorwrong.

One of these works was exhibited in Falling Stars / Stella Cadenti at the Crypt Gallery Euston, London in January 2019.