2 million & 1AD

Framing Identity; The 2010 Biennial commissioned over twenty artists to produce site-specific work considering identity, history and place-making in response to the estate. Half of the artists were invited by the Biennial curators, another group was nominated by peer arts organisations, and two further artists were appointed as the result of open competitions.

Houldsworth’s contribution to this event; an experimental ‘fossilisation machine’, referenced the discoveries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the burgeoning interest in acquiring, cataloguing and increasing the general knowledge base. The attempt to create a fossil using rudimentary, human-designed machines in place of truly natural processes was a folly of sorts, but one with a sting in its tail: Houldsworth’s project started with the attempt to petrify both a Tatton-grown pineapple and pheasant, but will only ‘naturally’ conclude when the artist is able to fossilise a human – there are no known petrified remains of Homo sapiens sapiens in the current fossil record. Shouldn’t there be?