Blog posts

Making Sense of Place - excerpt from 'Four Flags for Chapel Ash' pamphlet
I made a pamphlet to accompany my exhibition. It included some of the imagery, and I wrote this text for it: As an artist who works with the ‘everyday’ and ‘place’, working in residence in Wolverhampton has meant engaging with it’s ring road, firstly as an unavoidable, frequent encounter and subsequently as the focus of my work. If we go...  show more
Employability Wall
I was also asked to produce some work for a wall in the Long Gallery to demonstrate how a residence can be a form of employability for artists. For this I began pulling together some of the material I'd gathered from archives. I made this into 9 posters, 6 of which had a layer of trace on top with words...  show more
When images become flags : Four Flags for Chapel Ash
I gathered a lot of material on the ring road and was aware also of Enoch Powell on my peripheral vision. It's 50 years since he made the 'rivers of blood speech' when he was MP for Wolverhampton South West. The two came together one day when I realised the stretch of ring road I was interested in was built...  show more
I have found a place to work
Now that I am technically competent at screen printing I began to look for somewhere to work in Wolverhampton (being a public artist). As I went to different areas, on my bike - no mean in feat in Wolverhampton! I began to use the subways under the ringroad as a way of staying safe from the traffic. As I did...  show more
Bits of Wolves - scratching the surface
A while ago I found a map of Wolves and taking off the detail, but leaving the boundaries left an image that looked a lot like a flower. I left it for a bit, but have now returned to it as a basis for finding a spot to locate my project in. Yesterday I used it as a start point...  show more
Going mobile but where?
One of my residency goals is to explore making screen print a mobile process. I am becoming knowledgeable about the print making process, but I now need to see where I can take it physically. I asked one of my peers SIan MacFarlane if she would meet me to discuss Wolverhampton as a place. Sian is a long term Wolverhampton...  show more
The value of a new medium
For my residency I wanted to learn screen printing. As a photography and public art graduate it is not a million miles away from the mediums I already use but I am finding the process of learning a new medium is focusing my mind on my practice as I consider how to apply it to how I usually work. Invaluable...  show more
Background in place
Getting more to grips with the medium, I had films made for a two screen process and have printed the background colour, waiting for them to dry and printing colour two next week. Understanding the process and trying to think of how it can work as a mobile process out & about; I think the photocopier could be key! What's...  show more
Working on the image - step 1
After an introduction to the wonderful screen print department at Wolves, I am working on the first part of the process, an image through which to learn the process. I am starting with ideas of equality and publicness and am enjoying a return to thinking in detail about single images.    show more