On the evening of 6 September, Tony Butler found a large black moth in his bathroom in Stoke Newngton.
By luck, Tony is a chap with a great knowledge of nature, and a valued member of the recording group I set up at Woodberry Wetlands, a London Wildlife Trust nature reserve in Hackney, this Summer. He recognised it as a rare migrant - The Alchymist - and, the first ever recorded in London.
We decided to put in on display for a day at the reserve to give people a chance to see and photograph it. This created a Twitter storm, and travellers from all ends of the UK came down to see it.
its glittery, complicated surface intrigued me, its witchy foreign feel. At the height of this Summer there was much talk about migrants, because of the events in Syria, and Brexit. Without wanting to be heavy-handed with this word, I coined the name 'The Stoke Newington Alchymist',
I have been collecting second hand sequinned and devoree clothes from local charity shops in North London this year. Slightly repelled but fascinated by the fabric, I have no attraction to wearing it, but the synthetic feel, the patterns derived from 'exotic' nature, the troublesomeness of recycling it - drew me to it as a potential material for working with.
Liberating to not do 'fine leather' - just use my 'local' material.
