Dorset, Verenigd Koninkrijk

The Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula extending from the British mainland into the English Channel, is topped by limestone beds composed of the compacted remains of primeval gastropods—the ancestors of freshwater snails. Shortly after it was established in 1983, the British charity Common Ground arranged for Peter Randall-Page (b. 1954, Essex) to install a series of works fashioned of “Purbeck Marble” (limestone quarried on the Isle of Purbeck) along a bridlepath on the Dorset coast. His shell-shaped sculptures mimic the Cretaceous species entombed nearby and engage with deep time by resurrecting an ancient species to witness ecological degradation in the present.

C.S.H.