"Understanding is not come by passively, nor is imparted simply in the showing and the telling of what one claims to know. To know the taste of a pear you must change it by eating". Mao

Martin Prothero is seeking to understand our place in nature through his art practice. Informed by the pressing awareness of the ecological crisis we now all face, Martin makes work that allows nature to document itself, temporarily side-stepping the dominant human-centric view.

“In a world of too much talk, image overload and conflicting theories about our global environmental future, I offer an antidote of simple action. I am putting my fragile human self in direct contact with the natural forces that are often referred to as wilderness. Not pitting my wits against nature in some ego battle – quite the contrary - but entering in to a dialogue with nature in which I am humbled.

We are nature, it flows through us: we eat it and drink it everyday. The very breath that I use to form these words is shared with every living thing on Earth. I have a lot to learn and a lot to unlearn”.

Martin Prothero is best known for Carbon Light Life, a body of work that records the passing of wild creatures over the surface of the land. Plates of carbon-covered glass are laid out overnight in locations where, through his research, he knows that animals frequent. Their footprints leave marks of their presence on the glass, which are beautiful abstract drawings in their own right and can be read as a narrative of a specific place. They record the point in time where the creature's life and the artist's were connected.

His work for the RANE research group at University College Falmouth (Research in Art, Nature and Environment) was more strongly process-led and experiential. Through learning to track animals during Carbon Light Life, Martin learned to see and read the indexical signs left by animals in the landscape all around us. From this he learned more about the ecology, about animal’s co-existence, interactions and habits. More recently his work involves sitting for long-durations of 12 and 24 hours in the natural environment, researching the multi-sensuous language of the natural world in great detail.

The next stage of this process of learning from the land involves living in one place for a longer duration. Becoming resident, part of the ecology, eating, sleeping and breathing the environment in one location: processing a place both physically and mentally and being completely part of it. The skillbase required to maintain this activity includes tracking animals, foraging for seasonal food, making fire by friction and listening to the language of birds and animals to understand more fully what is happening in a place.

2008 will see a new body of work developed with this process at its core. Collaborating with Geoff Dunlop, an internationally renowned film-maker, the pair will experience living in pockets of ‘'uninhabited’ wild land through all four seasons. The outcome of this new work will embrace the rough with the smooth: feast or famine of seasonality .