Hello and welcome to my website
I know this isn’t the usual way to present an artist statement and bio, as taught at art school and all of those workshops artists scramble to attend post graduation. The ‘professional’ artist statement and bio is often written in the third person but it just feels weird to write about myself from that perspective. I’m also adverse to referring to others or myself by surname only, to me it is another form of stripping away a person's identity. I’m kind of done with following the rules to validate my artist identity in the eyes of the funders, curators and organisations. I think I’ll just stick with being true to myself:
Artist Statement
My work explores identity and (un)belonging from the perspective of a working class, neuro-divergent woman with long term health conditions living in rural Warwickshire. The work is autobiographical, observational and reflective. My work digs deep into the multiple layers of identity and (un)belonging within systems and structures of hierarchy with society and the chain reaction of cause and effect, finding connections and searching for answers. My work is a personal, social and political commentary and reaction to what I see, hear and feel, directly and indirectly. My current work is focusing on the entanglement of how our health informs our inner and outer identity and the push and pull of (non) conformity. I work with a variety of media and have produced photographic, moving image, installation, spoken word, digital, oil, ink, and pastel painting and sculptural art works. I have an acquired brain injury which makes reading and writing problematic if I try and conform to the expected delivery and receival of the written word. There will, therefore, be errors within these pages. These errors are now a part of my identity, they do not detract from my message unless you allow them to.
Artist Bio
I have always been an artist but did not have the opportunity to explore and develop an artistic practice until my mid 40’s. I had never been inside an art gallery and knew of only a handful of artist works. I was particularly drawn to Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso. I began immersing myself in artistic practice in the early 2000’s, as a way to reconnect with my creative self and express the pain and confusion of living with Bipolar Disorder II and CFS. A local artist suggested I attend art school. I went ‘back to school’ in 2015 and studied BA (Hons) Fine Art and Contemporary Cultures achieving a First. I graduated in 2018 as an artist described as ‘an artist activist’, known for my moving image work and the founding of community and artist-led groups.
Following graduation I continued to develop my practice, taking advantage of national and international artist residencies, exhibition opportunities, curatorial community projects, leadership residencies and creating and developing artist development workshops. I was a member of advisory groups and joined the board of Coventry Biennial in mid 2021.
Recent exhibitions have included, Invisible Cities, Selfridges, Birmingham (2022), and Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art 2021: HYPERPOSSIBLE.
Recent curatorial projects have included, The Parallel State 2021 and The S-o-A Community Art project (2020-2022).
During 2020 I developed, created and delivered the artist development initiative Speedy Crits, and in 2021 co-created and developed Navigating Disaster and Art in the Street, artist development workshops for the arts organisation Coventry Artspace.
In September 2021 I returned to study at Birmingham City University, MA Arts and Education Practices, with the intention of graduating in September 2022. However, my time has been temporarily cut short following a stroke in April 2022 and I am currently near the half-way mark of my year of healing, reflecting on my arts practice, then and now and discovering how this has changed my practice, place in the arts and society. I am doing this through work which continues to explore identity and (un)belonging with a focus on what was once familiar and is now sort of different. This current body of work includes a reflective written blog, research, experimentation with materials, connecting with the natural environment and (in)action/stopping.