Gleaners

After the harvest, women carried out a task known as gleaning. Once the last sheaf of wheat had been cut, they were permitted to enter the fields and gather the individual grains that had fallen to the ground during harvesting. They hoped to collect around a sack and a half of grain for each household, which would then provide the flour for their bread throughout the coming year.

There was also an element of control and inequality within this tradition. Men could assert their authority by deliberately leaving a sheaf of corn in the corner of a field so the women had to wait. The work was physically demanding, requiring the women to bend repeatedly to the ground, collecting what remained after the main harvest.

While researching this work, I was particularly drawn to Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners, and to his depiction of the women bent low against the landscape, their bodies becoming almost part of the land itself.

The making of the sculptures became another way of exploring ideas of land, labour and time. When pouring the concrete, I used several different ‘recipes’, incorporating materials including Fenland soil. The resulting layers reference geological strata and the accumulation of time within the landscape.

The copper has been aged and patinated by burying them in Fenland soil. During periods of hot weather, I had to repeatedly water the metal to encourage the chemical reaction and develop the patina.