I was born in Oxford in 1971 and studied at Brookes University, from where I graduated in 1993 with an honours degree (2.1) in Visual Studies and Art History and in 2008 with an MA in Contemporary Arts (with Distinction).
2006 – 08
MA (Distinction) Contemporary Arts
Oxford Brookes University
1990 – 93
BA (Hons) (2.1) Visual Studies and History of Art
Oxford Brookes University
Artist’s Statement
The remains comprising our present-day environments are overlaid with a weave of unremembered lives, narratives and events, which in a moment can be revealed through even the most mundane objects and surroundings. My work seeks to explore these revelations, through the use of text, movement, image and sound.
My passion for the past extends to archaeology, and whereas archaeology is concerned with the study and interpretation of the past through its material remains (artefacts, inscriptions, buildings etc.) my interest as an artist includes those ‘remains’ which are immaterial; things which have not survived, which even in their own time were only ever fleeting; the one-time presentness of the past and the unrecorded everydayness of the world, as witnessed by those now lost within the pages of history.
The difference between the past and present might well be vast (not only in terms of temporal distance but in the manner in which we live our lives), yet sunlight and shadows, the feel of the wind and the sound of it blowing through the trees are all things which have remained unchanged and which can, despite their transience, bridge a gap of centuries.
As we move in the spaces left between the remnants of the past, we move, in part, under the influence of those remains (artefacts, inscriptions, buildings etc.), encumbered with our own present-day fears, full of our own hopes and memories, just like those who knew those same remains (ruins and broken pieces of pottery) when they, like the past, were intact. The present becomes a means of filling in the gaps, not so as to recreate a picture of the past, but to re-imagine the past as having once been present.
The way we stoop, to read an inscription on a wall, scratched by a prisoner hundreds of years ago, brings us through a kind of kinaesthetic empathy, closer to that lost individual. The way we stand again, turn and catch the sky through the cell window brings the past and present closer together. The way we interact with artefacts, buildings and places in the nowness of present, reminds us that the past too was once the present, that people were like we are today; people who experienced the world, however different it might have been, as we do ourselves.
My aim then is to make works which explore both the material and immaterial past. To look at the past through the lens of the present and re-witness artefacts, inscriptions and places, not so as to recreate the past, but to understand its presentness – the very fact it happened; to see the past not only through the play of its remains and my imagination, but also through the play of the present day and my embodied mind.
Past Exhibitions & Residencies
Remembering, We Forget; Poets, Artists and the First World War
Sidney Cooper Gallery
Canterbury, UK
November 11th – December 17th 2014
The Space Beyond Us
Artmill
Plymouth, UK
April 4th – 19th 2014
Kaleidoscope
The North Wall
South Parade, Oxford, UK
October 10th – November 3rd 2012
A Line Drawn in Water
Artist in Residence
The Lock Up Cultural Centre
New South Wales, Australia
October 29th – November 18th 2010
Mine the Mountain 3
The North Wall
South Parade, Oxford, UK
June 7th – 26th 2010
Mine the Mountain 2
Surface Gallery
16 Southwell Road, Nottingham
March 6th – 19th 2010
Snow
Northampton University
Northampton, UK
January 7th – February 8th 2010
The Woods, Breathing
Shotover Country Park
Oxford, UK
January 27th – February 8th 2010
Echo
The War Memorial
St. Giles, Oxford
September 9th 2009
Murder
St. Sepulchre’s Cemetery
Jericho, Oxford
July 17th – August 2nd 2009
The Tourist
University of Central Lancashire
Preston, UK
April 1st – 4th 2009
Mine the Mountain
The Gallery, Oxford Town Hall
Deadman’s Walk
University of Oxford Botanic Gardens
Oxford, UK
October 1st – 8th 2008
M8 *
OVADA
Oxford, UK
September 26th – October 11th 2008
The Gate (The Ordinary Language of Freedom)
St. John’s College
Oxford, UK
April 11th – 12th 2008
Obsessions *
Modern Art Oxford
Oxford, UK
March 8th – 16th 2008
Residue *
OVADA
Oxford, UK
May 12th – June 30th 2007
* Group show