A cabinet of (un)natural history is a display mimicking a natural history museum showing fossils from our future. This serves as a warning of what future generations might find of us.
The Gault clay of Folkestone, once preserved ancient sea life, now creates these speculative “fossils” impressed from contemporary found objects. These “fossils” now hold impressions of our time, disposable plastics, toy fragments, technology, symbols of war and hope.
All ask the same questions:
What will remain of us?
Who will be there to find it?
Working with the (Un)Imagined Futures theme from The Folkestone Fringe, I imagined a time when people might uncover traces of our present lives. What would they find, and what might those fragments reveal about our busy 21st-century world?
Fired clay is one of the most enduring materials humans have ever made. Long after steel rusts and plastic breaks down, ceramics remains. What will be left of us in 145 million years?
Using local clay from The Warren, I pressed found and everyday objects into its surface to create speculative “fossils,” imagining them as relics displayed in a future museum. In public workshops, participants created their own impressions of the present, adding their stories to this shared archive.
To close the cycle, these clay artefacts will be returned to The Warren and offered back to the earth as potential future fossils.