I was recently invited by Emre Altindağ, PhD researcher and editor for an interview in the first edition of Memory and Light and to be the keynote speaker at the accompanying conference in August 2021. Memory and Light is an international artist-led collective and new publication for illustrators, graphic novelists, and storytellers. I discussed with Emre the role of narrative and storytelling as a key tool in my approach to sketchbooks and my practice. Article pdf here.
Drawing
Fun Drawing – Curriculum and Methodology
Starting in 2017, Fun Drawing is an ongoing China/UK early-years learning development initiative and collaboration.
I am looking forward to engaging with the next phase of this project in the coming months.
Mail art exchange exhibition – I didn’t lick it
I am pleased to be part of the exhibition I Didn’t Lick It, a group exhibition of over 350 artists who have collaborated using mail art with the Bruton Correspondence School over the last twelve months.
The Bruton Correspondence School is a (slow) mail art exchange project established by Chris Roberts and Rebecca McClelland, partly in response to the impact of the worldwide lockdown and their attempt to connect with a broader audience on the most basic and meditative level.
The collection showcases the innate ability of collage to construct a fresh and new visual exchange beyond the two-dimensional into the structural world and craft of visual making. While experimental, each collage is also didactic, layered with hidden messages, reoccurring motifs and shared concerns that speak as an abstract indicator of the surreal times we live in.
The exhibition will be across three sites in Bruton – The Bruton Museum @brutonmuseum / The Old Pharmacy @oldpharmacybruton and the Dovecote Gallery @dovecotegallerybruton
The show will run from 24th July – 25th September 2021, open weekdays 11am-1pm and Saturdays 11am-3pm.
The Sketchbook Project at The Brooklyn Art Library
The Brooklyn Art Library is home to the World’s largest collection of artist’s sketchbooks. I completed one of the project sketchbooks earlier this year and have just sent it off to join the archive of over 30,000. It was a project I’d followed over the years and I am pleased to have now added my own sketchbook contribution.
Painters + Collection 2021 Exhibition
I am very excited to have been invited to exhibit my work at Painters + Collection 2021, at Nakata Museum, Japan. 21 artists from Japan, Korea, Mexico and the UK are showing work alongside the museum’s collection of 19th and 20th-century paintings, curated by Yuko Kunichika.
Sampler series
Rather like the singular activity of drawing in sketchbooks, cross-stitch as activity and pastime has made even more sense during lockdown. The last few months have allowed me to review the Sampler series – a body of stitched works using variegated threads, initially shown in 2018. Lockdown has enabled me the opportunity to experiment with different colour palettes and investigate the potential for further work using cross-stitch and space-dyed thread as a tool for translating ideas around memory and and recoding.
Above: Sampler, work in progress.
Sketchbook Thinking
Sketchbooks are an intrinsic and integral part of my practice, a place where I collate, record and synthesize viewed and remembered experiences.
I am currently obsessed with comicbook-like hieroglyphs, in search of or potentially reliant on a visual equivalent to the Rosetta Stone, combining the recognized, the invented and the possible. These draw from a range of real and imagined destinations and cultural references, many from regular visits to China.
South East Open Studios
New work in progress, drawings and prints developed from recent journeys in China.
As part of the South East Open Studios. Over two weekends 15-18 and 22-25 June, showing alongside Heather Haythornthwaite and Sarah King at the Hazelnut Press.
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- Illuminated Objects I, Giclée print, 23x32cm
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- Illuminated Objects II, Giclée print, 23x32cm
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- Illuminated Objects III, Giclée print, 23x32cm
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- Illuminated Objects IV, Giclée print, 23x32cm
Trace Engines show at Rochester Art Gallery
The first UK exhibition of the Trace Engines project, which included a solo exhibition of drawings and mono prints at the AIP Gallery, Redtory Art Zone, Guangzhou in 2015, opens on the 25th November 2016 at the Rochester Art Gallery, Kent.
The private view is on the 24th November from 6:30pm and there will also be a series of workshops and artist’s talks that accompany the exhibition. This current show, from 24.11.16 to 20.02.17, brings together new work and pieces produced during my residency in China.
‘Trace Engines is a series of amalgamated drawings that on the one hand suggest a design or plan for something to come, and on the other seem like the residue of something that has already been. In this, they constitute a process of mediation where the acts and media of their creation – the drawing, tracing and mono printing – become iterative expressions that model an as yet unknown object.’
Drawing from China
Reflecting on the China sketchbook, looking at the drawings and key images of a pivotal three-week period leading up to the Trace Engines show. People watching in cafes, evening meals with friends and dramatic flying fish all contained within the scrawled memories of South China.
