ABOUT

CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS

The London Open 2022, Whitechapel Gallery, London
30 June – 4 September 2022
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11am-6pm (11am-9pm on Thursdays)
https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/the-london-open-2022-2/

OTHER PROJECTS

Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast
19 November 2021
https://disastersdecon.podbean.com/e/friday-special-artistic-expression-of-being/

Pause for Thought
A workshop and accompanying contribution. My contributions can be seen here:
https://pauseforthought.net/entry/sorry-and-apologies-emails/
https://pauseforthought.net/entry/sorry-and-apologies-texts/

STATEMENT

I am a conceptual artist working in a variety of media. My practice is broadly focused on how we, as humans, try to order the world around us. I look at the systems people create and the behaviours we exhibit that help us exert perceived control over our existence.

Measuring, recording, naming and categorising are all ways which we try to create this order. We save things and preserve them for posterity. We archive things for the future. We believe in religions that promise us eternal life or reincarnation. We search for answers through stories and through science. In my research I often start with the personal. I examine how I interact with the systems around me and bring this personal experience into dialogue with wider conversations about the human-mediated world.

This area of study has led to an interest in quantitative rather than qualitative information. I am fascinated with data, numbers and dates, and time is very important to me. I am however also interested in the poetic and the whimsical, chance and coincidence, and I mix these differing approaches together to various degrees in my work. I strive to know how much the world can be summed up or described.

Narrative and language are important in my work. Sometimes just a sentence is enough to spark an idea for a new project and I like to make work that can be summed up quickly or explained verbally quite easily.

Translating, in the widest sense of the word, is a process I often employ; translating numbers into colours, whimsical ideas into seemingly reliable data; creative processes into an ordered administrative structure. I also often end up remaking existing objects. I try to exactly replicate something that might have been made with very different techniques, going beyond the use of trompe l’oeil towards the realms of recreating or forging.

I fear being forgotten and this is why, through my art, I try to leave a trace and, however lightly, touch people’s lives. I am almost constantly striving to create a situation where I could be removed from my life and my work but I could be perfectly summed up by what I left behind; my possessions, my home, my art. I am scared of forgetting, of being forgotten and of running out of time.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Education

2017 – 2019
MFA Fine Art (Distinction), Slade School of Fine Art, London
2005 – 2008
BA (Hons) Fine Art (1st), University of Wales Institute, Cardiff

Exhibitions

2022
The London Open 2022, Whitechapel Gallery, London
2021
Plymouth Contemporary, KARST and The Levinsky Gallery, The Arts Institute, Plymouth
2020
Mapping the Discordant Blues, A Room Upstairs Gallery, London (solo)
Where There Were Once Walls, Rake Community, Online
Depictions of Living, The Art Pavilion, London
2019
The Red Mansion Art Prize Exhibition 2019, Royal Academy, London
Rumblestrip, g39, Cardiff
Author’s Translations, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London
Postgraduate Printmaking in London 2019: A Survey of London Art Colleges, Clifford Chance, London
Stretch, PS Mirabel, Manchester
Untitled, The Pole Gallery, Paris (solo)
Pareidolia, Daniel Benjamin Gallery with Space Station Gallery, London
Fast Forward: Women in Photography, Slade Research Centre, London
Bite the Bullet, Barbican Arts Trust, London
2018
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018, South London Gallery, London and Liverpool School of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University as part of the Liverpool Biennial

Residencies

2018
Red Mansion Art Prize Residency, Beijing, China

Awards and Grants

2019
Shortlisted for The Clifford Chance Purchase Prize
Winner of the Julia Wood Prize for excellent use of space during the Slade Graduate Degree Show
2018
Winner of the Artists’ Collecting Society Prize
Awarded a Grant from South Square Trust

Commissions

2021
What is (the) time?, Commissioned by EOP, Eastside Projects and Radar, Loughborough University to produce a mail art project in relation to Loughborough University’s Institute of Advanced Studies Programme on Time
2015
Small Lies and Half Truths, Commissioned by Tangle International, South West England’s African and Caribbean Theatre Company at Guest Projects, London
2009
Wall with a Viewpoint, Commissioned by National Assembly for Wales, Cardiff (with Lauren Curl, Ed Elliott and Madge)
2008
Wall with a View, Commissioned by Cardiff Bay Harbour Authority Cardiff Bay, Cardiff (with Lauren Curl, Ed Elliott and Madge)

Publications

2022
The London Open 2022, Exhibition Catalogue
2021
Takeaway Zine, issue E10
2019
isthisit? issue 06
2018
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018, Exhibition Catalogue
An Introduction to New Contemporaries, Zine by Shy Bairns

Talks and Events

2021
Performance of Time Well Spent as part of Nocturnal Creatures, Whitechapel Gallery, London
Home & Away Talk with Jess Matthews for GS Artists, Swansea
Pause for Thought Workshop with The University of Lincoln
Interview for Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast, Online
Artist Talk about What is (the) time? Commission with Jennifer Brough and Martha Jordan for EOP, Eastside Projects and Radar, Loughborough, Online
2018
Goethe Institut and Red Gate Residency Artist Talk with Julia Debus, The Bookworm, Beijing