ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I am a video and mixed media installation artist using projections and materials including glass and silk to suggest the multi-layering of memory and meaning, creating poetic responses to stories found in original archives. I film on location and in the studio focusing on women and others hidden from history and have also traced journeys of migration and exploration. Recent work, Shattered Silk (2022/3) includes interactive video, interpretive dance, handsewn silk, and digitally printed cotton costumes. Silk is a metaphor for some of the entwined stories and contemporary resonances of women in the turbulent 1860s when class and race were key concerns and global events affected local lives. Both stories and materials relate to my exploration of the liminal space(s) of adoption.
I have exhibited widely and was the first artist in residence in the archives of the National Maritime Museum in 2005-6, Mariners and Migrants; In Search of Home was exhibited as part of the traveling exhibition Life at Sea. I was selected for solo shows, Land/Seascapes of Memory at Duff House, National Gallery of Scotland in 2009, and WAVE/ING, at the Aberdeen Maritime Museum in 2012. I was the selected British artist for the cross-border residency Ici et La in 2013, making new installations in Hastings and Dunkerque, and was commissioned for Unravelling the National Trust in 2014, creating site-specific work for Uppark House. In 2018 I completed my PhD by Published work, Dis-Locations and Broken Narratives, which situated my work in relation to my experiences as a late discovered adoptee. My installation Dear Child, inspired by the familial letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was shown in Hyphen, an Exposition between Art and Research at Ambika P3 Gallery in June 2019. As the Crow Flies 2009/2019 was exhibited at Severndroog Castle in 2019.
Former Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster, London, UK. Churchill Fellow (2005)
