I had the great honour of creating the last ever Whitstable Biennale commission with my walk Swept Away in 2024.

Swept Away took the audience on a circular route from All Saints Church in Whitstable to The Street at Tankerton beach, and back. The walk took place on Nutting Day and we honoured the ritual of looking for nuts on September 14 as we walked through the alleys of Whitstable down to the sea. We also stopped at the tea garden by Whitstable Castle to look at marcasite and discuss the copperas industry. Marcasite/ iron pyrites was once collected from the beach and used in the preparation of copperas, an important component of dyeing/tanning and a key industry in Whitstable between the late 1500s and 1800.

My Swept Away route also took the audience along the tidally exposed The Street as well as stopping at the Gorrell Tank car park to look at the water flowing beneath the site. At both locations we discussed themes of coastal erosion, submergence, and land reclamation. A monkey puzzle tree was the last stopping point on the walk to think about this tree as an animate fossil and a link with the tropical landscape that covered the Whitstable area in the Eocene era.

I am very grateful to Sue Jones and Elizabeth Tophill for all their time and support in developing this piece of work, to Cement Fields for funding it, and to Sue, Elizabeth and Katie Cohen for being my lovely assistants and wearing with such flair the pomegranate and oak gall dyed tunics I had made for the event. Many thanks too to Samuel Taylor for documenting Swept Away.

It was a special afternoon, and completely in the spirit of the wonderful, unique, and much missed Whitstable Biennale.