Arabel Lebrusan

HomeLand is a site-specific installation of 150 ceramic swallows with hand-engraved tin beaks on willow wood sticks; symbols of migration, memory and belonging.

The sculptures were developed through a series of co-creation clay and tin workshops for refugees, local schoolchildren and families, led by Lebrusan and ceramicist Kate Lyons-Miller. Participants came from over 20 countries. Formed from Dartmoor ball clay and Cornish tin from Blue Hills, St Agnes, Cornwall, they draw directly on the land’s geological and cultural history to explore the shifting meanings of home as a continuum, past, present and future.

Installed in the shade of an ancient hornbeam tree at Southcombe Barn, Devon, the expanse of vertical sticks topped with small swallow sculptures evokes a forest of stillness for a species constantly in motion. HomeLand formed the central project of Dartmoor Clayscapes: Empathetic Journeys through Clay, 2025, a programme of workshops, interactive performance and film curated by Cassinelli Mills, and was subsequently shown as part of Cartographies of Care: Women / Land / Art, Southcombe Barn, Devon, May 2026.

HomeLand is still in development. You can support the project or acquire an artist proof through the HomeLand Crowdfunder.