Since 1992, I have been moving towards creating site-specific work that explores notions of history, memory and time-passing using found photographs and objects as starting points for research. As artist artist in residence in three very different buildings or institutions – Addenbrookes hospital archives, a 12th Century church (the Leper Chapel) and Cambridge Museum of Technology, an old pumping station, the theme that has connected and remains constant throughout is the exploration of the complex relationship between past events and contemporary ideas in society. Underlying and motivating the work at Addenbrookes hospital was the desire to record and understand paradoxes that are present within the hospital,fragility versus substance, the dramatic versus the everyday, stillness versus the passing of time At the Leper Chapel, I explored the theme of the “Mass of Separation” – a Christian mass that was obligatory for the lepers who attended the church and lived in the hospital. It separated them from the rest of society whilst giving them shelter and solace in the church and hospital. My response to this piece was to create an installation using sound and film that questioned marginalisation and stigma. In my most recent exhibition at the Cambridge Museum of Technology I re-created a collection within the museum, looking for ways that went beyond the two-dimensionality of a series of photographs and representing elements such as texture, light, space, the beauty of the machine and presenting them for people to experience by moving around and through the work. The AA2A scheme would allow me to develop digital skills and would also give me time to research and re-frame how I describe my practice within contemporary art debates, satisfying both practical and academic elements that are essential to any in-depth pieces of work and to document the process through on-going diary or blog.

'Out Of The Ashes'