Summer Sale and Support

Photo by Jason Bryant

I am fundraising to help pay for 3 events, amounting to £2000. The funds will enable me to:

• build a new shed for art storage, easing workspace in my studio

• support the development of Riot into a performance, by working in collaboration with Melanie Thompson towards a transient happening at Tout Quarry during One Island - Many Visions.

• film documentation of the performance by Andy Ralston.

Donate

The latter two will be part of a new body of work which I plan to show in a future solo. You will be invited to visit all 3! Your patronage will be hugely appreciated and acknowledged. Just a donation of £10 can help me reach my goal!

Riot is a site-responsive intervention at Tout Quarry for @oneislandmanyvisions, and also wearable sculpture. Inspired by Maritime Sunburst Lichen growing on the rocks at Tout Quarry. Created from recycled materials including ocean waste & textiles (some home-dyed with natural pigments), Riot is a reflection on ‘troubled beauty’, Arts Precario, beauty tinged with sadness. Currently working on Riot (part II). Thanks to all who have donated materials including Weymouth and Portland Litter Marine Project, Jane Fox, Caroline James, Victoria Grinter, Marilyn Keemar, Linda Staines, Nigel Evans, Vanessa Lloyd-Jones, Gill Sakakini.

Part of my fund-raising is a SUMMER SALE of work. I’m offering a discount on drawings in my online shop.

Large Moth

COURSES

I recently ran an Eco Sculpture course via Frome Community Education, see below results

New courses start in the Autumn: Please visit these links: Drawing & Creative Sketchbooking 

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS

Eco Sculpture workshop: Hidden Cabin, The Grange, Charlcombe Lane, Larkhall, Bath BA1 8D, Friday 25 July, 10am-3.30pm. Book here

Drawing in Space with 3-d Materials: The Sherborne, Tuesday 5 August, 10.30-4.30pm with luchbreak.

Sculpture Workshop as part of Hauser & With Somerset’s Myths & Machines exhibition, Sunday 21 September, details coming soon on events programme.

TUFTED DUCK

I invited the community to take part in creating a Tufted Duck sculpture at Collett Park Day, Shepton Mallet, for an Eco-Arts Festival Trail ’25. Delighted with lots of engagement. Themed ‘Flock, the trail is about water life and takes place in Shepton Mallet, Cranmore & Doulting during the summer holidays. Look out for sculptures made from re-purposed materials & pick up a trail map from the Art Bank, library, One-Craft  Gallery, Shepton Mallet, or Station Cafe, Cranmore.

Article of interest:

Donald Trump’s Cultural Revolution

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Ongoing

Working on the second part of Riot for One Island - Many Visions, inspired by Maritime Sunburst Lichen growing on the rocks at Tout Quarry.

Riot is a site-responsive installation, created from recycled materials including ocean waste, to be placed on rocks in the quarry. It’s also a wearable sculpture. I’m raising funds to work with a dance/choreographer leading to a performance at the quarry during the show. Let me know if you can contribute. Any amount much appreciated, however small.

I’ll be taking part in a Pecha Kucha, Tuesday 17 June, 6.30-8.30pm, Stroud Valley Arts, 4 John Street, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 2HA. £3 cash or card on the door. ‘8 visual artists present their work in the brilliant 20x20 pecha kucha format: Emilie Sandy; Fiona Campbell; Jessica Akerman; Risée Chaderton-Charles; Sam Marsh; Albie Luca; Deborah Cox; Tilly Geoghegan

Sack is on show at Insert There, curated by Roger Clarke, 'The Street’, Locksbrook Campus, Bath Spa University BA1 3EL, part of Fringe Arts Bath Festival ‘25. FAB runs until 7 June. Visit all works

Some of my work is showing in the Round Tower, Black Swan Arts, 2 Bridge St, Frome BA11 1BB, part of Frome Community Education Tutors Art Exhibition, until Saturday 7 June. I’ll be there on 4 & 6 June, 10-1 if you want to say hello.

Last chance to book my upcoming Eco Sculpture Course with Frome Community Education, Wednesdays, 2-4pm, starting on 4 June for 5 weeks. Makers’ Yard, 37 Lower Keyford, Frome BA11 4AR. Book here

II’ll be leading a one-day Eco Sculpture workshop at the Hidden Cabin, The Grange, Charlcombe Lane, Larkhall, Bath BA1 8D;, on Friday 25 July, 10am-3.30pm. Book here

More workshops coming soon.

Visual Arts South West is calling on everyone working in the visual arts to write to their MP asap to urge them to champion our sector in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review. This is a critical moment — big decisions are being made that will shape public investment, livelihoods, and the future of our sector for years to come. Outcomes will be announced on 11th June

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B-Wing, Contemporary Art in Unexpected Places

Making one of my giant ladder forms. Photo by Jason King

I’ve been focused on the lead up to B-Wing, an ACE-funded arts project in Shepton Mallet Prison I’m co-curating with Luminar Star, alongside 6 other artists.  Fuelled by the idea of presenting art in unexpected places, the prison’s cavernous B Wing will be transformed into an immersive experience.  Curation has been all-consuming, involving a huge amount of fundraising, planning, management, PR/radio chats, meetings…  In tandem, I’ve been making artwork for it. 

The practicalities of making large-scale work is challenging with limited studio space.  Thankfully, we had a good summer, enabling me to work in the garden on sculptural pieces.  I’m grateful to Shepton Mallet Prison for allowing me to take up residency in B Wing’s Servery to develop my artwork, and thanks to Nick Weaver for use of his wood workshop facilities and technical assistance.

I’m making large-scale site-responsive sculptural installations involving dysfunctional rickety ladders, referring to the game snakes and ladders.  Interacting with the space, one will be suspended high up in the skylight of B Wing.  Piranesi’s Tavola VII (The Bridge), from The Imaginary Prisons series, resonates with my concerns around freedom and confinement, the endless human cycle of desire, striving, greed, suffering, and human imposition of nature.   Recycled and found everyday materials - wood, fabric, paper, cardboard, wire, twine, wool - are being transformed into drawings in space.

My skeletal ladder structures refer to precarious lives, dreams, escape.  ‘All realization of potential’ Bachelard observes, ‘is conceived as elevation… depicted as a rising curve.’ Ladders are the imaginary stairways of spiritual ascension, dating back to genesis.  I want mine to appear winglike and bonelike, reminiscent of flight, and extinct animals hung in museums.  They will be translucent in parts, ghostly, dreamlike, surreal.  Layers of reused monochrome collaged newspapers add a frailty, evidence of our consumerist world. In contrast, flesh coloured handwoven and wrapped entrail forms will dangle and entwine around ladders, bewailing the heavy realities of violence, destruction, waste and suffering around us.

The work raises questions - are we all offenders given the state of our world today?

We have numerous free workshops, talks, tours and performances, many come with free get-into-prison tickets. Collaboration is key.  We’ve been engaging community groups making work to be featured as part of our exhibition.  I worked with Whitstone School and adult groups creating collaborative pieces, based around possessions, identity, marking time, time as value, bound. ‘Conversations became the threads that made our connections.’  

Saturday 28th September is B-Wing’s action packed Special Events Day from 10-5.  It will be opened by John McCarthy, renowned writer and broadcaster held hostage in the Lebanon.  The day includes a performative Join in the conversation with Lou Baker and me, Lucy Large’s artist talk, a performance by Luminara Star and Rosie Jackson’s poetry reading.  It will be a day to meet the artists and celebrate. Please come along!

 On National Poetry Day, Thursday 3rd October, 2-4pm, poet Rosie Jackson will lead a poetry performance, 18 Poets in B-Wing, featuring poets from the South West.  On Saturday 5th October, 10-1, I'll be running a family friendly sculpture workshop.  See attached posters (designed by Chris Lee ) and visit: www.b-wing.weebly.com  & social media: @bwing2019

B-Wing opens during Somerset Arts Weeks Festival, 21st September - 6th October, daily 10am-5pm. Reduced entrance (exhibition and prison): £10 adults, accompanied children free.

I’ll be posting about my other projects soon!