My research and practice is concerned primarily with occupied spaces and the narratives that unfold in them. My drawings of school playing fields, junked underpasses and the like often contain text with the tone of dialogue. Through these glimpses of speech the dilapidated environments come to life in a skint version of enchantment: a tree stump or a broken fence are filled with the meanings of the events that go on around and about them.
In my attempts to unearth this unpredictable and fragile process of memory, I use biro drawings, paper interventions, animation, video and text. More recently I have made a series of interventions, films and animations and text that focus on recurring motives that often feature in the work, ditches, unofficial dumps and breached security fences. My series of Pop-Up drawings inhabit the space between two and three dimensions, transforming folded paper into emotive sites for memory and recollection.
My practice-led research explores the psychological role of an artist-in-residence through collaborative engagement with narrative and spaces around a locale. The practical analysis of how walking and narrative (space and time) interact in physical, virtual and psychological space, that space and time are implicated (Massey 2005), is vital for progressing the context of a self-initiated artistic residency. ‘In Search of the Shortcuts’ the name chosen for the research project, invigorates and situates the past in the present through the ‘Wythy Walks’, a series of physical and virtual co-walks around Wythenshawe, South Manchester. The research aims to re-conceptualize the notion of an artistic residency by exploring the relationship between walking and memory, and by referencing my past artistic experiences.
My current research question is: In Search of the Shortcuts – The Past in the Present. How walking and narrative interact in physically embodied space, virtual space and psychological space, in the context of a self-initiated artistic residency.
