PEAR PRESSURE

Pear Pressure investigates how something as transient as inscribed 'text' on prickly pear leaves (opuntia ficus-indica) might reveal surprising insights into place. The photographic installation interrogates the strollers' tendency to inscribe words and symbols on the fleshy tissue of prickly pears growing abundantly along a Mediterranean valley. Strollers succumb to the habit of their peers and with a pointed or sharp object and by applying some pressure inscribe 'text' onto fresh succulent leaves.

'Soft graffiti' may further our understanding of fleeting territoriality. I photographed this habit over a number of years accumulating hundreds of photographs. Each photograph tells a story. The photographic archive emerging from such project developed into an artistic installation first exhibited at the University of Leeds, UK, in 2014 and at the University of Malta Junior College, Msida, in 2018.