Through the process of creating this image, where I helped the tea leaves through "guided chance" on a sheet of ice, I suddenly saw the papers and leaves of Jeff Wall's "A sudden gust of wind" in the configuration of the tea leaves. I love the visualisation of that image (and the Hokusai image before it), where artefact (papers) and the natural leaves mingle, and I'd like to borrow that idea in my image, where the concept of shared, intertwined space and frozen time also plays a key part.

The image is part of a series studying traces of life. They might be seen as visual statements touching on the semiotic connotation of impurity, and as a visual poetic oscillation between something that appears alien, and yet is intertwined with the experience of being human on this planet. 

The use of ice as a medium for what is really a kind of still life meditation has a lot of meaning, relating both to space and time. As a starter: the object has its own space on the threshold of our immediate reach, and this "frozen time" (unlike the photograph, maybe?) and space are slowly returned to us. But then something has happened - the photographic recording, among other things.

Printed 48 x 36 cm (approx 18.9 x 14.7 in) with pigment on fine art photographic paper. Edition of 10, signed on the front and on the enclosed certificate of authenticity.