Forest + Found, Crucible

Artists Max Bainbridge and Abigail Booth set up their studio practice, Forest + Found, in early 2015 as a space for material research and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Working in both the visual arts and contemporary craft, draw upon a background in painting and sculpture, whilst looking towards a newly developed language of craft. They work on objects independently, to produce installations and displays that form dialogues between landscape, material and process as they navigate the changing context of the maker. Driven by a deep relationship to the land they work with raw materials sourced directly from landscapes in and around the UK. Wood, earth and iron are the recurring elements that ground their practices in a material investigation of form, composition and colour. The use of raw material is integral to the work, with wood transformed into objects symbolic of human ritual, and cloth saturated in iron and earth to produce canvases that conjure the monumental and meditative. Using fire, earth and water to sculpt wood and build up colour on the surface of the cloth, they produce objects that challenge the relationship between the imagined and the actual, where landscape occupies the critical space between thought and process. They treat this liminal space as a site where human narratives and identity can be challenged and re-written through the gesture of the maker and their interaction with the natural.