A garden carved out of stone is a film about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a doomsday construction that endeavours to freeze and conserve seed samples of all the world’s agricultural crops in the face of future uncertainty. It is a store of biodiversity and anticipated resilience housed in an ex coal mine beneath Arctic permafrost.

Another element of the work occurs in the Hall of Mirrors featured in ‘Last Year at Marienbad’, a 1961 cinematic work that questions time, memory and narrative. The Rococo interior of the ornate hall hints at remnants of a past decadence whilst references to the film’s script and structure are subtly planted throughout the present work.

These elements are juxtaposed with fossilised plants from the Carboniferous geological period circa 300 million years ago. At the time vast swaths of tropical forest covered the land, the remnants of which are the prime constituent of today’s buried coal deposits.

The combination of these seemingly disparate references results in a study of entanglement, causal relationships, dependencies and the ongoing lives of materialities.