art and making portfolio
This series of images, ‘Analogue preservation: family album’ is an ongoing deconstruction of the enormous digital photo collection of my children that has built up over the past twelve years. I have become interested in my relationship with digital images: the oversaturation; the quantity over quality; the visual clutter; the disconnect of capturing a moment rather than truly experiencing it by being in the moment. Where photographs once used to function primarily as memorial objects, these days they have shifted into a communication tool used in such unprecedented volumes. Whilst acknowledging that digital images have transformed our lives in such powerful ways, I began to consider what might have been lost in this digital deluge.
Analogue Preservation #7 (top right) was exhibited at Cromer Artspace, August 2024
This series adopts a purposefully slow and mindful approach to that visual overload: sorting through digital images and choosing which moments to preserve by utilising analogue techniques of monotype, words and simple context information. This series adopts an unapologetically personal, and intentionally nostalgic stance, utilising a purposefully slow form of attention to reclaim slowness and those fleeting digitised moments.
24 visual artists and writers contributing to an international group exhibition. ‘We Also Fight Windmills’, a collaborative undertaking for which Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s life and work, as well as artist Ania Ready's photographic interpretation of it, were the points of departure.
Oxford University Press, Fairway Gallery, 4-26 April 2024.
bishy barnabee
dormant on the window’s edge
waiting for Spring warmth
As an artist, a researcher and primary teacher, I am particularly interested in the construct of childhood and the childhood experiences and personal narratives that form our memories and contribute to our identities.
I enjoy exploring combinations and collections of images, words, and repeating motifs.
Ladybirds, or ‘bishy barnabees’ (the Norfolk word), are among the best-known and most well-loved beetles, and have a place in my own childhood memories. The representation of them in the bishy barnabee series of lino-prints explores how a simple, small motif can increase in visual power and impact through repetition, number and in being part of a collective.
A loveliness of ladybirds
July 2023 - explorations into childhood, memory and repeating motifs
“I have memories of building ‘homes’ in flower pots for ladybirds in my parents’ garden as a young girl. I remember the ‘swarm’ of ladybirds that I observed one Norfolk summer (2009?) on a trip along the North Norfolk coastline. And a stay in a lovely Oxfordshire cottage that yielded a host of them hibernating in the corners of an upstairs attic bedroom! I am fascinated by the beauty of the adults, as opposed to the arguably less beautiful larvae. I read about the ‘invasion’ of the non-native harlequin. The power of this tiny beetle as part of a collective is awesome.”
My art-research-book, shared at both of these celebration events in May and June 2023…
May 2023
The curious teacher’s guide to thinking and being - April 2023
Invitation to the reader: please click on the front page image (right) to read the e-book version.
This art-research-book is the final outcome from the research project exploring teacherly thinking.
The artistic offerings created as part of the research process and shared within the art-research-book are not intended to be explored objectively as creative works of art - they are there as a primer, a mixer and a medium for the thinking taking place - by both the researcher and the audience.
I invite you, the audience, to be open to bypassing the familiar, routinised ways of expressing and engaging with academic thinking. Be prepared for ambiguity, surprise, multiplicity, and imaginative and empathetic responses.
In moving away from judgement and precise findings, the research process and outcomes here intend to re-frame 'ways of knowing’.
(Please be aware that this e-version is the first draft - minor referencing/ sentence/ grammatical errors will be fixed going forwards. Please bear with me!
The e-book version here is also better viewed on desktop rather than mobile view, as you get the full benefit of the double-page spreads.)
Playful explorations in preparation for the art-research-book:
