‘The Fold is the Smallest Unit in a Labyrinth’ (Solo Show), Canalside Gallery, London, 2023
An exhibition inspired by the folds in worn clothes. Not just seen as beautiful drapery, but as a record of human movement and spent time, left behind in the material.
It starts from a simple observation, and like most seemingly simple things, it turns out to also be immensely complex. Folding is a profound underlying universal system and rhythm. The fold organises materials everywhere: from biological molecules to geological structures. Folds both reveal and obscure.
Over a year folds and their origins have been studied recorded and recreated in such various materials and media as fabric, foam, metal, clay and photographic prints.
The fabric patterns are digitally transferred drawings, all lines are hand-drawn.
‘Spaces, Places’, Broadway Gallery 2023
During my 2022 residency at Benson Sedgwick, I made a number of steel polyhedron spheres, using random lengths of metal with the only rule that three rods must meet at every corner.
The resulting spheres were used in this sound performance “Return to Dust”, where the spheres make a church bell like sound rolling on the floor:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1j3JT0oxzg/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Link to a clip of the performance above.
The spheres were also featured on the exhibition poster:
‘Works That Never Came to Life’, curated by Winnie Hall, 3D women!, Art Hub Studios, London, 2023
Another kinetic sculpture, which was activated by exhibition visitors:
(Filmed by Monika Drabot, 2023)
‘On the Edge’, Royal Soc. of Sculptors London, Espacio Gallery 2023
Drawings that has been digitally printed on fabric, mattress foam. Big soft slumped forms that question both the rigidity of the patterns and the square shapes. The rigidity of the grids in the patterns are also contradicted by the hand drawn lines.
Benson Sedgwick Residency 2022
My work is process based, and I had to find a way to work that way in metal. I made series of works where I welded together unique folds and rolls made with various workshop machines – or, in the case of the Air Pillars / Bubble Towers, bending strips over my own knees.
I see these as a kind of three dimensional line drawing – moving around them to see the lines overlap and interact is exciting, especially when adding shadows.
‘Ingram Prize Exhibition”, Unit 1 Gallery, London, 2022
Using drawing on digitally printed fabric on mattress foam to make this mattress like roll. The string, fishing wire for 45kg, is under enormous pressure which can be seen in the material.
‘Gilbert Bayes Award Exhibition’, Cromwell Place, London, 2022
I wanted to try a balancing act, moving between 2D and 3D in this work. The print is a pillar formed of enlarged photographs of the wrinkles at the back of trouser knees. The shapes are reinterpreted in 3D in the ceramic, photographed again and arranged together in both 2D and 3D. The work was made during the lockdowns, so I think it was a kind of performance without performers.
‘Meet me halfway — on the line’, Eastcheap Project Space, Letchworth Garden City 2022. (Joint residency with Aaron Ossia)
Using folds to create 3D space. In part a preparatory project for my metal work residency at Benson Sedgwick, which started the month after.
Pipe Dreaming of Sad Tubes (Tu be or not Tu be), Conditions, London 2021 (Reviewed in Art Monthly no 450, October 2021, p.32)
This is an arrangement of 30 ceramic tubes that were individually deformed before firing, creating a collective arrangement of sad tubes.
‘Body Language’, Art Zine made for ‘Feuilleton: I Will Bear Witness’, Spoleto & MACRO, Rome 2021 – Curated by Dr Jo Melvin
‘Body Building’, Small House Gallery, Online Lock-down project 2021
With accompanying Virtual Reality build ‘Body Topology’ Virtual 3D Gallery, Online Lock-down project 2021
“Att komma hem”, Gerlesborgs Konsthall, Sweden 2019
(Reviewed in Bohusläningen, 20/6/2019 “Den kreativa bygden i centrum för Sommar-Gerlesborg”; Bohusläningen, 25/6/2019, “Konst utan slut för den som besöker Gerlesborg”)
Clay pressed into the palm of my hand, and made into ‘beads’ on this DNA inspired double string arrangement. The exhibition was about geographical “belonging”, joining together someone who had moved from an area (me), someone who had lived there all their life, and someone who had moved there from abroad.
Solo Exhibition: ‘Archive: Reimagining the Borough Road Collection’, 2018
Made after a residency at the Bomberg archive at London South Bank University. The lines on the wall are enlarged copies of brush marks on the paintings in the collection, where the original orientation was preserved, creating an ‘archive of direction’. The prints on the right hand side similarly collates all yellow and all red parts of the painting. The sculptures are my first works with fabric and mattress foam, using the simplified shapes used for human forms in life-painting.
Performance “Get Into Line” (pictures taken from longer performance)
Using the simplified painterly lines, mostly used to describe the human body – I wanted to bring back the complexity of bodies again, using the lines as a choreographic score.
Performers: Andrea Kearney, Bettina Fung, Cecilia Nikpay, Charlotte Callis, Desiree Kerswell, Karen Le Roy Harris
The residency was at Borough Road Collection (A David Bomberg Legacy – The Sarah Rose Collection) at London South Bank University. The collection holds paintings by the radical teacher and artist David Bomberg and his students in the Borough Group, the project was recorded in a blog found at: https://www.boroughroadcollectionarchive.com/blog/
Botanical Warriors, Gardenia Collection Kew Herbarium
Work inspired by a research residency at Kew Gardens Herbarium, studying the biodiversity of Gardenia, which is threatened in the wild.
The ridged round seeds shapes were the inspiration for shields and their calyxes (characteristic residues of the flower) were used to make spear heads. I wanted to evoke botanical warriors to protect the plant, and invited performers to activate them in a performance.
Performers Eldi Dundee, Zoe Toolan, Karen Le Roy Harris (above, amongst others)
Serial Gymnastics (Performance at Light Eye Mind Gallery 2017)
My first sculptures made specifically for being activated by human interaction. The ceramic handles have different connectors, forcing the performers to adjust to their shapes and becoming part of the sculpture. Maybe also a comment on the impossibility to conform when everyone is different.
Performers: Irene Pulga, Sylvie Toutain, Vicky Chapman
The Observer Effect at Hockney Gallery, RCA.
Using the human form as a carrier of form or as a symbol.
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