Using a combination of black light and wild meadow grass, Red Hot Haystacks explores ideas around the unseen environmental impact of human activity through a story of nuclear testing in the 1960s. High levels of radiation were reported on the coasts each side of the Pentland Firth that separates mainland Scotland from the Orkney archipelago. The seas proved too treacherous to complete any survey, but later, soil particles from haystacks contaminated by atmospheric nuclear testing, were described by geologists as Red Hot.⁠

This iteration of Red Hot Haystacks was made in the Great Hall at Coker Court, part of Od Arts Festival 2025 – Thinking in Circles. Initially developed through a series of residencies on Orkney.  I learned to build the stacks by studying other artists depictions of haystacks. This current version leans heavily in to Van Gough who made the most incredibly charged drawings that just seem to connect everything together.

‘Dog roses blush, honeysuckle trails and elderflower powders the air in East and West Coker. Dressed in May abundance, the sandy Somerset villages radiate genteel nothing-doing respectability. Yet culture, of an invigorating and experimental kind, has penetrated these sun-slowed lanes. Where TS Eliot once meditated on ageing, death and modernisation, the south-west has its very own bite-sized biennale, the Od art festival.’

Read Hettie Judah’s ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review in the Guardian