Places infiltrate my memory into action Sounds trigger my interaction with others

My process-led practice spans video, installation to drawing and live performance, merging digital technologies with lo-fi craft. My sculptures, immersive video narratives and multi-sensory interventions are propelled by a desire to seek perspectives of truth, incite participation and bring people together in expansive joy, through expulsing sites of conflict within the individual and interrogating violent and rigid hierarchies that propel injustice and inequalities and mute diverse voices.

I am interested in such blockages; of language, action and interrelations with others, how they are linked to the psychological and the physiological and how I may create new spaces to efface constricting boundaries that may intensify alienation, marginalisation or exclusion.

Through the editing process and my multi-sensory installations, I can dissect and offer new meanings, connections and truths in relation to our fears, desires and life’s complexities.

Piercing people, place, action, material, time; my works confront the viewer with an urgent reassessment of our migratory histories, locating our spiritual dilemmas and opening fissures to reconstruct our collective constructed identities.

With dark humour and play as glue, my process may precipitate change through these ruptures for possible co-existence towards active self-agency and renegotiation of our belief systems. In ‘Amongst Dark Trees, A Clearing’, solo exhibition, Grundy Art Gallery, I examined the impact of trauma and memory through interactive sound and light works. I embodied a seer/savant/dictator figure in Military Craft I (Guangzhou Live)– and continued the sequence in Military Craft II (Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast) responding to the context of Belfast and the Troubles.

My work is interested in uncovering the shades that separate truth and fiction, through a reconnection with narratives from the past that shape present realities. In my residency at Villa Waldberta, Munich, I explored the figure of the eccentric 18th century Bavarian ruler Ludwig II (Madly Into Night, Munich) that in fact uncovered more about the story of Villa’s role during the holocaust, whilst in Marseille, I deployed the tarot cards, interviewing Phillipe Camoine, devisor of the Tarot De Marseille to map Marseille’s port flux (Tarot De Marseille, La Friche La Belle De Mai) and the shifting borders and migration of this prominent port. This took the shape of a large scale installation that showed three video works and a performance with myself as a shamen/seer figure- together they challenged our individual belief systems and how we in modern times seek to be guided and make sense of our surroundings.

The mapping of reality and fiction through architecture and the occult resurfaced in my solo exhibition at Cornerhouse, Interval; A Narrative Psychosis – my 13 channel video installation transformed gallery into labyrinth set stage. This culminated from an in-depth research trip that drew parallels across Hong Kong and filming across California- from San Francisco to Palm Springs. The American occult figure of Sarah Winchester became crossed with the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and uncanny turn of events during a residency in Sherborne, together these sights, places and voices became tightly woven into a narrative and an architectural reconfiguration of the gallery space that viewers explored, encountering voices and vistas along the way. The videos ranged from documentary to cinematic in style- for example Amnesia; A Rehearsal to question what is unseen and seen.

My work has been described as ‘prolific and beguiling’ and indeed, it is the trace of a process… medium to convey a clearing space following conflict and revolution. From forgotten detritus to interpret a sublime paradise sanctuary inhabited by colourful creatures from scrap materials– jumping interminably on a trampoline in a Scottish forest- exploring food production in China with local families (Happy Stacking with Grizedale Arts and Vitamin Creative Space)… interviewing Steven Speilberg’s scriptwriter– scaling the heights of Palm Springs aerial tramway, panning South China sea vistas– devising a carbon sockprint formulae in Sock Exchange, (FACT)…

My South America research trip funded by Arts Council England enabled me to undertake investigations and filming across stunning landscapes, climates and cultures. From Peru to Chile and Brazil. I mapped the land through collation of materials .. from alpaca wool to Inca sedimentary, volcanic rock and glacial flora… intense ceremonies with diverse religions saw me challenge my understandings as much as my trekking across vast expanses… raw material for new making.

My art enables me to incite joy through critical dialogue and inviting participation with people from diverse backgrounds far and wide; to delve deep across territories, to promote peaceful, joyful collective co-existence and to unlock our individual painful blockages. That we may yet begin to heal our global historie, value our biosphere and give each other a chance.

With a dose of wonder along the way…

This site: 2009-present