Untitled (For Michael Hamburger, after Tacita Dean), 2015

After completing my MA dissertation on Tacita Dean's work I was completely drawn in by Michael Hamburger and the film Dean made of him. A German poet and translator who settled in East Anglia, he was a friend of WG Sebald and appeared in his book The Rings of Saturn. When Dean visited him to make her film she was taken in by the apples Hamburger grew and collected, and her film became about these and Hamburger's relationship to these apples.

When in my studio one day I put down my apple to tidy something up, and upon turning around found myself looking at this image of an apple on a table which, in my mind, resembled a shot Dean took of Hamburger's apples. This is a tribute to Michael Hamburger, of whose voice I can still hear from the film, and his relationship to those apples and the care he took of them.