No glory to be had (new experimental work)
This is a mixed media project that uses a Western adaptation of Kawandi quilting, a technique originating with the Siddi, an ethnic group from Southeast Africa who experienced forced migration to India through the Ocean Slave Trade. The quilting, traditionally carried out by older women no longer able to work in the fields, employs a process of slow meditative stitching, combining found and recycled fabric, scraps of textile reused and repurposed, often being the vessel of memory and remembrance.
Exploring my own memories, connections and sense of loss, and my relationship with my grandfather and the stories he told me, I delved into his childhood Waverley encyclopaedia collection that I inherited on his death. With dusty, well-thumbed, hardbound covers they were already old fashioned and outdated by the time I got my hands on them, but within the pages of those books held strangely alluring stories and secrets. Published after the great war, still with strong echoes of colonialism and empire, but long before the outbreak of world war two, in which he served, the books told tales of valour and victory; interspersed with ornate colour plates depicting now extinct birds and animals. As a child I immersed myself in the strangeness of past times. Later, as an adult, understanding the impacts of colonialism, both on those colonised, but also the 'canon' fodder sent to do the colonising and warring, I gained a deeper appreciation for my grandfathers post war pain and suffering. I knew there were things he witnessed but never spoke of, but were deep rooted traumas. Later, the loss of his sight and the one love of his life, changed him as a man, and my grandad all but disappeared into himself. The books to me now are odd and disturbing, a boys glossy document of glamorised times.
The best secret of those books was that every now and again, between the pages, I would find a piece of folded kitchen paper. Carefully placed within would be plants; small, fragile flowers picked from the garden, leaves and foliage pressed over the years. As time passed the flowers faded and disintegrated leaving ghostly imprints on the paper to be replaced with my own flowers, and later those collected by my children.
The books still sit on my shelf, replenished with leaves and flowers every year, reminding me of him, keeping the memory and connection to the past alive.
Lost woodlands 2020- ongoing
This work is a commentary on the continued habitat destruction that human construction and infrastructure projects inflict on our environment.
Combining photographs of woodland and trees that have been felled and destroyed, with free flow machine embroidery, (a technique that allows the needle to move wherever it wants, guided only my feelings and emotions and without a plan), the project is a memorial to the loss of nature and a grieving process for the events I witnessed while documenting the HS2 protests.
The imperfect, hazy cyanotype images are my fractured memories, like long ago dreams that I wish weren't real, paired with the haphazard stitching that serves as a metaphor for the wanton destruction that takes place everyday. It has no disregard for conventions, for neatness, for prettiness, much like the habitat destruction and overexploitation of resources that are driving species to extinction at an alarming rate.
As these human activities deplete our natural resources faster than they can be replenished, how do we remember what was once there?
Lost Woodlands (textile work) 2020 - 2025
Lost Woodlands: A series reflecting on nature loss at the hands of construction, with particular reference to the HS2 project which has wrought the most damage in recent years.
This body of work combines documentary photographs taken between 2020 and 2023, newspaper headlines, official reports, letters from protesters, embroidery and quilting
This work is a reflection on the fleeting headlines, memes, and images I've witnessed in relation to Palestine on a daily basis on social media.
These fleeting posts fill our vision with horror and grief, and then are gone. With nothing to compare in the mainstream media they stay with us, in our minds, even when they are gone from our feeds. As humans the emotional processing of such trauma, live streamed to our homes, is problematic. We are not equipped for such viewing, and are lost for ways to express what we witness except on the streets and in protest, as a collective gathering and a community, and even that is at risk.
This project includes photographs, installation and embroidery capturing some of those headlines and sound bites and street protests.
Invisible \ Visible Project 2024-2025
The Invisible\Visible project was a collaboration between photography, storytelling and textile art, created by participants curious to explore menopause, perimenopause.
After experiencing early menopause and encountering difficulties in finding support and accessing services, I wanted to talk more about menopause. I conversed with other women and realized that many women still don't know much about menopause, and they are often left confused and searching for answers.
The aim of this project was to challenge the silence and the lack of knowledge, widen the conversation and offer other women of diverse backgrounds a safe space to share and discuss their unique experiences, and express these through art.
I also wanted to work more collaboratively, with other creative women experiencing menopause or embarking on that journey. The project was awarded an Arts Council England grant and I recruited two others artists, Nichola Charalambou, a writer and Tisna Westerhof, a textile artist, with whom I created a plan to combine our creative skills.
This is some of the personal work made I made for the project and collaborative quilts, the designs of which were participant led, that I finished and constructed.
