Goldstone Road, Hove

I am a UK based fine artist working mainly with photography.

Since postgraduate study, I have divided my time between personal practice and art and design education (teaching and curriculum leadership) in Manchester, where I was born and in Sussex, where I now live. With a background and first degree in painting, an interest in making photographs has developed over time: initially supporting work with other media and subsequently as outcomes in their own right.

A preoccupation with interpreting the found mark has spanned a number of years. More recent work focuses largely on interrogating and exploring ordinary and often overlooked surfaces in natural, domestic and urban environments. Residues of human and other activity are areas of particular interest, suggesting all kinds of narratives and stimulating broad lines of enquiry. Whether metaphorical or literal, these investigations open up new, personal ways of deciphering and engaging with landscape.

Two confluent fascinations form essential and enduring elements of my work: Firstly, atmospheric and formal considerations; Secondly, the power of the trace, the fragment and the unresolved to provoke the imagination in unexpected ways.

Intersection

This body of work began life in 2015, exploring the boundary line on walls between neighbouring, terraced homes in mixed, densely populated districts of Brighton. These intersections, the meeting points of two households, are sites of commonality and contrast: in complexion, colour, texture and condition, as well as in structure, precision and conformity. Some boundaries appear as hard-edged, impermeable, fortress-like barriers, whilst others are softer, more informal or even non-existent.

Originally entitled "Beige Wars" this project (intended then as a parody of suburban domestic values) was shelved. It was reopened (May 2020) in the midst of the first wave of the COVID pandemic, a period when our understandings of community, personal space and safety were thrown into turmoil. The concept of "normal" began its new, unpredictable and conflicted journey: help, support, unity and interdependence on the one hand; fear, anxiety, distancing and isolation on the other. Re-examining these photographs (and now making further work), it is apparent that the 'boundary' has acquired new, urgent and fluid meanings in an unfolding climate of contact and risk.

Through the use of inverted (negative) and desaturated images, it is hoped that their literality and familiarity will dissolve to some extent, creating a broader, more abstract meditation on the nature and complexities of coexistence; not just domestically but in numerous, wider contexts.

Photography on Canson Archival Baryta Paper

60x62cm

Framed

Edition of 10