Fringe Arts Bath – Awe and Wonder
Threaded Exhibition at Newark Works
Fabrication 2021-22
I started working with people outdoors, weaving with willow in the spring of 2021 whilst social distancing rules applied. The group chose to make hearts, wreaths, birdfeeders, and the like. Around the same time a small group of volunteers started clearing the very overgrown garden of this grade ll listed public building where I have my studio and where I was working with people outdoors in that same garden area. There were a lot of cut branches accumulating over time and I started bringing the cuttings indoors and started to make a large heart like structure of my own.
The yarn coverings were added at a later stage, in 2022. In retrospect I see the piece closely connected with the pandemic and associated restrictions, the sense of separation and prolonged self-involvement.
Mind – Be Here, Present/Be Here Now
Wells Art Contemporaries 2021
Window Wanderland
Shirehampton High Street
Incendiary Lansdown Gallery Stroud and Pound Arts Corsham
Mater Immaculata
Mixed media: Melted plastic bottle found on river Avon litter pick, clay, matches, wax, candles, cloth
The idea for this piece of work originates in a melted plastic bottle which caught my eye during a local river litter pick. I pondered over its shape and how the distortions could have come about, most likely by a random rather than deliberate process involving fire. There were figures to be seen in it either way up, with similar yet differing characteristics. I decided it was to be an image of the virgin Mary of the Catholic Church. The work deals with concepts of purity and impurity, the destructive forces of heat and fire which, in mythology, religion and alchemy also symbolise processes of purification and transformation. With the cultural influence of religion mostly gone what can purity still mean and stand for?
I started off taking pity on a piece of rubbish – and I ended up feeling pitied by this Mother of All. We are all sinners we are all fools and must learn to do and be better .