deposition (WiP) /

an installation surveying the restoration of an ancient water catchment system, sustainable living and the rewilding of dry lands on the mediterranean steppe.

A restoration codex mapping precipitation, evaporation, condensation and transpiration within a novel ecosystem. One hundred bas-relief béton brut tablets (1000 x 400mm) each defining horizontal space within a water catchment system and mounted at the keypoint (where the force of water movement changes from erosive to deposition), at once a database for ecological regeneration and spatial/temporal landform delineation.

This is the (some time collaborative) practice of Joya co-founder and curator Simon Beckmann…

My practice operates as a critical extension of modernism, engaging environmentalism not as a theme but as a structural condition of contemporary art. Through experimentation, material awareness, and systems thinking, I explore the relationships between ecology, place, and human activity, working in direct response to landscape, climate, and limited resources.

Environmental responsibility functions within my work as a generative and analytical force rather than an external constraint. By this, I mean that ecological limits and ethical accountability actively shape the form, process, and meaning of my work, functioning as internal drivers of invention and critical reflection rather than as restrictions applied after the fact.

By a critical extension of modernism, I mean continuing modernism as a method of inquiry—experimentation, material honesty, and systems thinking—while critically revising its historical reliance on industrial growth and technological optimism through ecological intelligence and environmental accountability.

I use “structural condition” to mean that ecological reality now defines the material, logistical, and ethical framework within which contemporary art is made.

Through experimentation, material awareness, and systems thinking, I explore relationships between ecology, place, and human activity, working in direct response to landscape, climate, and limited resources.
— Simon Beckmann

Simon Beckmann title: title: QW7M+25X Alcaide medium: cast concrete bas-relief 1000mm x 600mm x 60mm

Add the plus code in the title of the work to google maps and you will be taken to the keypoint of the water catchment system. The work represents this point within the subject area topology.

This piece was first exhibited in the exhibition ‘reimagining joya’ an exhibition inspired by the experiences and artistic responses of a group of artists, graduates from Central St Martins MA in art and science, who have all participated in Joya: arte + ecología / AiR residency.

Recycled wood used in the formwork will be up-cycled annually to create yearly small edition woodblock prints. Each edition will act as a database of the ecological regeneration of the subject area.

Deposition (WiP) is a work in progress, the concrete* installation to be completed by Easter 2026. The keypoint is a body of water to be utilised in a variety of ways, irrigation for an organic vegetable garden, cooling for increasing summer heat and assisting micro hydrological cycles. The water is naturally filtered via a regeneration zone populated with aquatic plants in addition to particle filtration and oxygenation.

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