Artist Profile
Environmental artist
I am an art activist; a maker of gentle protest works.
I began my art practice in 2016 when I was invited to take part in ‘Sense of Place’, a project led by Joy Merron and Donna Vale. It took place on Brean Down, in a derelict coastal fort built onto a headland jutting out 1.5 miles into the Bristol Chanel.
For this, I created two installations: EROSION and EVOLUTION.
With Erosion, I wanted to raise awareness of our use of natural and man-made fabrics, their impact on the environment through washing and waste. Each component was made using a variety of donated natural fibres and fabrics following a social media call-out. They were then attached to the structure of a ruined look-out post on Brean Down and left to be weathered and worn.
This is something I regularly come back to in my work – waste, erosion, weathering – what we leave behind.
I am the Lead Artist and Curator of the ongoing collaborative creative project called ‘FIFTY BEES: The Interconnectedness of All Things’.
The project was conceived in 2017 to concentrate attention on the status of the British bee population and how endangered it is.
Each year, I create fifty small individual bee art pieces. I then invite another fifty artists, makers, writers, musicians to produce one new companion work in response to the ecology of one of those bees.
The FIFTY BEES presentation creates a unique narrative between bees, artworks and artists.
It makes explicit how pollinators are completely interlinked with our ecosystem.
To date, there have been 200 bees, 200 companion works and 4 exhibitions, the latest held in the Long Gallery at Black Swan in 2020.
My current exhibition, 'Towards the Tipping Point: Global Swarming’, in collaboration with Rebecca Bruton, is currently open at ACEarts in Somerton from 19th September to 24th October.
For this, I created a new body of work called ‘Motheaten Hierarchies’ which examines how we place value judgements on both humans and wildlife.
Please see ACEarts website for details.