Marc Provins

These pictures were made using the natural light coming into my improvised studio, late in the evening just after the summer solstice. The leaves are from the gunnera in my front garden, which unconventionally I keep in a pot to restrict his size. They are native to Madagascar but he seems to quite like the moist Manchester air. Handling this precious creature is like reaching back to the Jurassic period, it looks like dinosaur salad and is believed to have been around for 150 millions years.  My English suburban front garden is a time machine.

Making a home comes from the the core of me, I've always done it, I’m absorbed by the domestic. This is the place that I'm lucky enough to have that feels safe and secure. I like to arrange things, to take time to think about what I have around me, what goes together, influenced by colour, shape, history, meaning and memory. I also like to nurture, to grow things, its part of my make up, my nature you might say. The seed heads here are from my allotment, they look like this as a result of the weather this year. The light is natural, streaming in through my windows on a hot June morning. This room like my back garden faces southeast and has beautiful light and shadows from sunrise until the late afternoon. I'm telling you all of this because today I wanted to think about simple, everyday things, to meditate on the bigger picture, the sublime in the classical sense. Like many people I'm sure, I've started to feel overwhelmed by an unpredictable sequence of incom

I've always found the periphery of the city an interesting space to explore. It can feel like a secret concrete garden, forgotten and ignored. In the case of Manchester and Salford who sit on either side of a watery border the urban outer limits are fast expanding and blurring. Land that was forgotten for decades is suddenly valuable and being developed at an unprecedented speed. The relationship between nature and the built environment is quite curious in these neighbourhoods; sometimes roughly tamed, occasionally manicured but more likely wildly free, attempting it's own accelerated land grab. 

Jugaad - a colloquial Hindi and Punjabi word, which roughly translates as an innovative fix or a simple work-around, a solution that bends the rules. It is also often used to signify creativity; to make existing things work, or to create new things with meagre resources.

It's been raining all day and these beauties aren't built to survive in such a downpour. So I retrieved and photographed them before they become compost. There's something poetic about such an amazing, shouty display that is so short-lived.  I did something similar last year: Falling Apart in the Rain

Although I love growing and colour I wouldn't have chosen roses for my garden. I inherited these from the last owner of my home, and despite some tentative pruning and tying in they've been pretty much neglected. At the moment I have two high fences completely covered in them, literally hundreds, I feel like I should invite people around to see them, its a rather ridiculous, spectacular sight I feel I need to share. Whilst collecting these I got several injuries, which reminded me of their dual nature; all pretty and delicate on top whilst below they snag and catch with their razor like thorns.