A visual artist based in London, originally from the Isle of Wight.
I dismantle and re-assemble collected fragile filmic fragments.
My broken analogue images merge together with the digital in attempts to sooth loss.
Close handling of my personal collected matter allows my destructive touch and provokes internal personal fictions.
The work featured emerges from a larger project titled ‘The Matter of Sifting’, a sensory investigation into handling loss through collection, assemblage and internal encounters with found objects. The project exists as an active intergenerational collaboration between myself and my grandfather. Our practices entangle; my practice of handling broken image with his of collecting and reassembling tools transferring his lost fishing practice. Together, we test the haptic possibilities of fragments through deconstructing fragile images, collected matter and rusted tools. Our hidden collective labours are brought up to the grainy surface within sensory screen works, slippery text and sonic investigations.
The material work centres on human object connection, collected matter and the affective impact of making labours upon environments. Testing my embodied methodology of filmic swallowing, visual works celebrate image loss in destructive and soothing handling of analogue mediums. I hunt, collect and swallow the reels; hand-developing 35mm and Super 8 film with foraged plant matter. Herbs, weeds, fruits and food waste are churned into murky sensory solutions in attempts to reduce pollutants. Heavy grain from unwieldy mixtures of plant developers, fading uncemented images, loose hairs and scratches speak to my handling of newly learned practices. Whilst centring on analogue image loss, my work weaves through the digital sphere and utilize its elasticity for further image abstraction. Expanded broken analogue images mesh with the glossy sheen of virtual 3D sculptures and pixelated screens in a haptic embrace of mediums.
This methodology embodies the gut in necessary purpose. Proposing a closeness with internalised matter may allude to protective holding. My relation to our collected matter is not womb like – I am not shielding the reel, rather I engulf it whole, churning and filtering within. I accept reel loss as a natural part of the process and welcome grainy ruptured images as unique extractions. This disappearance weaves through the material works; diminishing species, vanishing habitats, lost labours and foggy image. We explore fragments and broken parts as a means of communicating and alleviating this loss through mass assemblage. We speak to contamination and present the collisions and conflicts of our affective matter; dormant fishing tools snare destructive debris left from photochemical processes. Super 8 and digital scans taint and pollute one another in attempts to mend and sooth.
Hiding Places. (2021) Short Film. 4:3.
‘Hiding Places’ breaks down and reassembles collected lucid matter and broken image to handle the loss of my Grandfather’s lone prawn fishing practice in Bembridge, Isle of Wight. Digital assemblage and shadow play telescreen projections engulf foggy Super 8 images hand processed in peppermint. In a haptic meeting of scraps and broken pieces, my Grandfather’s tools scuttle away behind the glossy digital screen in jittery animations. Alike the prawns hiding in weed, image and object become frustratingly elusive. Centring on translucent viewing, seeing through and destructive sensory encounters as a means of soothing loss the work is personal but not intimate as it breaks down image and object simultaneously.
Developing 50ft Super 8 with Peppermint
14 used peppermint teabags // dried mint
1L water
80g soda crystals
20g vitamin c
30min, inverted every min at 21 degrees.
A text assemblage handling my Grandfather's spoken word.
