Arising from an examination of (predominantly) British prehistoric funerary monuments, my current practice speculates on the decipherment of the past and our naturally equivocal relationship with death. Rather than attempting to record the topography of specific sites, the work seeks to engage the viewer in a contemplation of a vanished and inexplicable past in order to reassert the value of mystery and the numinous in a world which largely esteems (and is predicated on) the empirical. Beyond this, there is an attempt to interrogate what motivates us to invent and develop rituals: whether to explain, control or mitigate the significant events of our lives. In The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot proposes that “human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.” Ritual – which may include the making and contemplation of works of art – offers a means to alleviate, or at least assuage, the burden of that reality.