<i>For as long as the earth will endure</i> .

Twenty artists from the UK and Europe made a collective response to ‘Ground Up – Extraction’ the theme set by Veronica Sekules, Director of GroundWork Gallery, for the GroundWork Gallery annual residency programme. Extraction had close connections to each artist’s studio practice and research which had a shared fascination with materiality as a unifying focus. Coming together in the summer of June 2024, we each took part in a combined research week, walking, talking and listening to local experts in re-wilding, extraction, plant and wildlife, geology and local history. They told us stories that are woven into the bedrock of East Anglia and stories of the cliffs crumbling rapidly into encroaching seas. My own response to our time spent there was shaped by the unlikely meeting points of King’s Lynn’s history and trade, regenerative agricultural practice at Wild Ken Hill and foraging for earth from collapsed cliff sites on my many walks along the coast path. My subsequent making with materials resonated with a sense of taking and giving back (Springgay and Truman, 2019), exploring extraction and possible acts of healing. What follows here are text and image of the process of responding through making (Halcrow, 2023) to the complex and multi-layered stories of human extraction within King’s Lynn and the surrounding area and its long legacy into the now and the unknown future.