Influenced by socio-historical methodologies and eco-feminisms, Arabel Lebrusan’s practice often takes the form of site-specific sculptures and interventions that question existing hierarchies and power dynamics. Concerned with the deaths of humans and more-than-humans, she puts into dialogue both animal and environmental bodies that fall through the cracks of the system. The resulting absences inform and expand her own collage of lived experiences as a mother, a woman, a migrant and ethical goldsmith. Lebrusan describes how she ‘is attuned to the unbearable loss of children, the injustices carved into women’s bodies, the scars of extraction and exploitation, and the dislocations of land and belonging’.
HomeLand, realised in 2025, speaks directly to these conversations, connecting with geographies, geologies and histories of land. A moving and emotionally charged site-specific outdoor installation, HomeLand is concerned with both ecological and human grief in response to the extraction of people and place. The project brought together 150 people from over 20 countries to create a sculptural installation of 150 migratory clay swallows, under the canopy of a hornbeam tree in Southcombe Barn gardens. Swallows are regular inhabitants at Southcombe, Widecombe-in-the-Moor, as well as Lebrusan’s Spanish home town of Pecharroman. A common motif of migration, each bird was hand made, by different hands, with Lebrusan inviting local adults and children to create with her. The swallows were made with groups from Beyond Borders, Refugee Support Devon and local schools and community. Some have markings that read the country of origin of their makers such as Libya or Palestine whereas others are the result of exploring the materiality of clay for the first time.
The materiality of HomeLand carries its own weight. The clay is left white, its natural colour, and has not been glazed or modified. There is a soft and calming beauty in seeing the birds flock together in the gardens, but it’s not so much a beautiful coming together of people, but a representation of the high numbers and relentlessness of human displacement. Each bird represents a lived experience through the individual formation of each swallow. Examining the history of the clay itself brings ideas further into focus. For HomeLand, Lebrusan utilised clay gathered from the Bovey Basin on Dartmoor in Devon, England’s major source for ball clay. The basin itself is what is known geologically as a tectonic trough; a linear structural depression in the earth, formed at the rim of tectonic plates. Generated, then, by the movement of the geological plates, there is a dynamism inherent in the formation of the clay that speaks to the migration of birds and people. Here we recognise the idea of a grinding and shuddering earth created by tectonic displacement, producing a tension; a push and pull of existence and a faltering of flight.
Like the Cornubian granite batholith that forms much of the peninsula of south west England, Dartmoor’s clay landscape has evolved over millennia by a process of attrition and sedimentation. Clay is a geological manifestation of the planet’s deep-time history. The wider group project of which HomeLand is a part, Dartmoor Clayscapes: Empathic Journeys through Clay, explores continuums of space and time using this wider lens on the material as a framework for reflecting on contemporary socio-political questions.
Through interaction with clay the programme reflects on deep histories of Dartmoor whilst simultaneously using the materiality of clay to engage people kinaesthetically with land and with human and more-than-human experiences, reflecting upon global concerns to re-imagine more sustainable and empathic futures
– Vashti Cassinelli, Curator of Dartmoor Clayscapes
Like the clay, the tin Lebrusan has utilised for HomeLand – which forms the beaks of the swallows – has a deep historical connection to the local area while also having major implications of labour and travel. The south west of England was the primary source of tin for the UK for centuries. The landscape is now recognised as an UNESCO World Heritage site for Culture, which brings its own nuanced richness regarding labour, exploitation and land. Furthermore, Lebrusan specifically references the history of Ashburton in Dartmoor, a local and ancient stannary town where tin was stamped and traded. The tin in this project comes from a company called Blue Hills on the north Cornish coastline, having been mined by the sea and made clean by the pounding of the waves along the shore. It is worked under special licence from the Duchy of Cornwall using hand tools. This type of alluvial tin mining is ancient and being a renewable source has continued for thousands of years.
Collaborating and co-creating is a core element of Lebrusan’s practice and here she joined forces with ceramicist and educator Kate Lyons Miller to meet and work with local communities – including young people and the refugee community – to hold conversations around land and belonging in a series of free drop-in workshops. It is during these sessions the public co-created the migratory swallows with the artists, which were then fired in Lyons Miller’s Dartmoor studio.
While HomeLand formed the central installation, the wider Southcombe programme of Dartmoor Clayscapes also featured artists Iman Datoo and Florence Peake engaging with the materiality of clay ‘kinaesthetically’ and through tactile learning including workshops, interactive performance and film to reflect on migration and the ecological crisis, supporting the development of empathic responses to both human and more-than-human forms of life.
In her work Movement is Natural, Iman Datoo uses film to re-imagine these depleted ecosystems as spaces for healing, resistance and encounter. Datoo focused on landscapes fundamentally altered by human interaction, such as former clay and mining pits. Her work explored forms of reciprocal relationality, using touch as an access point to receive and communicate information that sits outside of the patriarchal structure of visual and verbal language.
Combining performance and visual arts practices, Florence Peake’s work explores forms of reciprocal relationality, using touch as an access point to receive and communicate information that sits outside of the patriarchal structure of visual and verbal language. As part of Dartmoor Clayscapes, Peake performed her interactive piece Voicings. Through performance with the local clay, the idea of collective agency is evoked as a way to access and articulate questions of personal, group and global concern.
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Vashti Cassinelli and Ella S. Mills
Dartmoor Clayscapes: Empathic Journeys through Clay was curated by Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn, Dartmoor, created in collaboration with Refugee Support Devon and local ceramicist Kate Lyons Miller. Local ball clay was kindly donated by Imery’s and tin sheets sourced by Blue Hills. The programme opened as National Refugee Week commenced in June 2025.