The abbey was once a centre of learning. The keeping, making and copying of books was undertaken by the monks placing them in the position of guardians of knowledge. With the advent of the printing press and translation from Latin, the written word could be disseminated to a wider audience.  With the dissolution of the monasteries came the destruction and erasure of the archive.

'Codices' was a temporary installation on the site of the library of the ruined Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. The work draws attention to the power of the written word to exclude or include, according to ability to decode it. The words here are taken from St Benedicts instructions to his monks but they are illegible as they are partly  erased.  The fragmented markings appear to have been stitched into the grass and were designed to be gradually obliterated as the grass grew pushing through the stitched text and regrowing in areas where the grass had been burnt. In so doing, the intention was to  mirroring the on going battle between nature and the human project in the attempts of its caretakers to preserve the ruins.

The work was the result  of collaboration with the gardeners and was stitched  with the help of a team of volunteers.