20:22 plaster aluminium, acrylic 102 x 100.5 x 82 cm 2022. photo: Article Studio
I cast about 2000 fingers in plaster, invoking the practice of taking a likeness via the death mask. The casts carry a detailed translation of surface of individual finger prints, and capture a moment of transition. The fingers , which are almost all mine, are reproduced as multiple anthropomorphic forms, gesturing upward and facing forward in crowded and silent isolation. They represent touch and feel and the sensitive membrane between an individual and everything else. I also understand the language of the digit as numerical time and date. 20:22 was made over the final year of my father's life when things were too slippery and overwhelming to articulate in words.
SINGLE woollen blankets, metal core 90m x 30cm x 30cm 2024
SUPER KING woollen blankets, metal core 2m x 30cm x 30cm 2025
SUPER KING + SMALL HOURS projection 2m x 30cm x 30cm 2025
BED
a series of ‘plinths’ or towers at heights reflecting the widths of UK bed sizes (in production): Super King, King, Double, Queen, Single. This work began as a single 1m high plinth housing a projector for SMALL HOURS animation. I find plinths problematic and was making an elaborate comedy plinth for installation.
Some of the blankets came from my deceased Dad’s house and some from house clearances. Dad died at home in his bed after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s and dementia - I had stopped him from being taken pointlessly and brutally to hospital, and was with him when he went.
I came to see the blanket tower had its own presence, provoking feelings of nostalgia, tenderness, itchiness, memorial. There is jeopardy in the narrowly stacked blankets, and their relation to the gendered hierarchies in the names of bed sizes, the difficulty with sleep, the bedroom, night.
a piece of writing from 1988 final year at Chelsea School of Art
I wanted, for seeing the blocks, to build one for myself. It was to be a room form and I was to be in it, for it to enhance my existence. Then there came various varying measurements – all for purposes. To be built, for strength, comfort, invisibility, aloneness, stimulation – a white clean environment with only a small entrance – at one point only from above. Now it is tall and thin and now no longer a room – it has become a symbol for sensible. Inside is a beautiful carved person, all person, perhaps not seen and having the beauty of existing without being seen once within this wall. It would make me think of an absolute person(al) humanity which is calm and strong. Different aspects of availability lead to numbers more than one, but the first one comes first. It has such a position so it is presence and essence. Tall. I thought I could not be stopped, it is my chance. The stone would be the opposite, the antithesis to the humane but it is the symbol of stature, of what ultimately can be achieved. each component has overall qualities which, when joined as one are the aim achieved but is not greater than the building. The process is strength. This is an object which is an example for people.
Laughing is understood and good. Breathe
PARENT BODY rolling pin, nails 18cm x 7cm 2023
VOODOO MUM rolling pin, dressmakers pins 18cm x 7cm 2023
OUT OF SORTS wood, human teeth, golf tees 10cm x 4cm x 4cm 2023
RADIO HEAD found materials 24cm x 20cm x 10cm 2023
BABY TENDERISER 80mm x 50mm wood, metal, baby teeth 2024
POTATO MASHER (I Do Not Miss You) bat, fishing wire, metal 40cm x 6cm 2023
WILL POWER found ceramic, cork, wire 7cm x 9cm x 4cm 2023
MURIEL wood, paint, ceramic, metal, bakelite, plastic, rubber, pencil 24cm x 9cm x 7cm 2023
FULL AUDIO EXPERIENCE wood, pins, paint, radio parts 9cm x 14cm x5cm + variable 2023
photos: Article Studio
DROP series of 5 resin cast plastic detritus 11cm x 11cm x 15cm each 2020 photo: Mike Garlick
In the ‘70’s or maybe the early 80’s, my mother stopped her car and picked up some rubbish that had been thrown out of the car in front. The story goes that she followed the car back to a house on the edge of town, knocked on the door and handed back the rubbish, saying that she thought the driver had dropped something. She could have been punched in the face. I don’t know what really happened but I like the story. My mother never got particularly riled by anything, except religion, which she was not at all in favour of, so this story impressed me much. I’ve been picking up other peoples rubbish for years.
INERTIA at INCENDIARY curated by Patricia Brien SVA Stroud 2019
photo: Mike Garlick
In 2019 I issued a call-out for unwanted decorators paint, of which there is approximately fifty-five million litres a year in the UK. It is said that most home owners in the UK store, on average, six cans of paint, much of it half used and deteriorating in garages and sheds. The abutment of aspiration and procrastination is evidenced in cans of dried out colour and their display of familiar names and logos.
Inertia was assembled as an absurd act of community service, house paint being easier to accumulate than to dispose of. People were delighted to offload their waste.
The work was installed during Incendiary 2019.
An unintended effect, in this exhibition dealing with toxic environments, was that the installation gave off such strong vapours that each can had to be covered in cling film.