Through September, we welcome our Artist in Residence Erika Cann, responding to the theme of Deep Time. Erika explores the relationship between bodies and geology, through her own body as a rock climber, and the more-than-human bodies we see in the landscape.

For Erika, ‘Technofossils’ are traces of human history that will become part of geology in the deep future - they question our position within geological time, and our entanglement with future landscapes.

Erika works across photography, printmaking and sculpture, to understand and re-create forms and processes within geology. Plaster imitates the formation of stalactites, print emulates the pressure and layering of fossilisation, and the photographic surface acts as a slice of time through the bedrock. Based in Devon, her work references local geological landscapes, from ancient granite tors, to the ever-changing Jurassic coast, to hidden lava flows beneath our cities.

During her residency, Erika will be making work inspired by the geological past and future of Paignton, exploring the boundaries between geology and human, and natural and man-made.

You are invited to submit your own deep-time finds, and to share your own relationship and stories about deep-time to gather a story of Paignton’s strata.

Erika will also be welcoming you to find out more about her creative process and to learn about how creativity can be a tool to question, imagine and unpick big questions through a group walk.