This Art Arcadia residency unfolds within the unique setting of my allotment in Ballymagowan, Derry — a modest yet fertile ground that has become a site of reflection, experimentation, and imaginative projection. PLOT is not simply a piece of land but a layered proposition, an attempt to bridge the factual and the fictional, to construct an imagined scenario that is rooted in reality yet stretches into the dreamlike. It becomes both a literal and metaphorical terrain where the boundaries between cultivation, creativity, and speculation blur.

Over the years, the allotment has evolved organically, shaped not just by my own presence but by a wider community of growers, makers, and dreamers. Multiple sheds, each with its own character, have sprung up, marking the space with traces of personal and collective endeavour. These repositories of tools, seeds, and stories embody resilience, invention, and adaptation. They speak of a landscape in constant negotiation between utility and imagination, order and disorder, growth and decay.

This installation invites us to pause and consider nature’s cyclical rhythms — germination, flourishing, decline, renewal — and the part we play within them. The work positions the allotment as both witness and participant, a mirror of our environmental impact as well as our aspirations. By situating art within this living system, PLOT becomes a meditation on sustainability, stewardship, and the possibility of renewal.