Acts of Empathy
I was already crying before I got here...how goes it for you? I don’t know what to do when the aggressor comes...I watch as they take up space, and change shape…I am learning to disappear...
Besides packing a man’s suit for the residency, I also brought with me the sum of parts of a previously unpicked suit jacket lining, specifically because I wanted to begin by creating a series of drawings. Drawing provides direction, and establishes a compass point, by using a deconstructed man's suit as my guide, I retrace the steps of another human being’s imaginings and thinking, I will follow their attention to detail; the shape; the form, and mapping the tailor's route, with my seam ripper and pencil, I will carefully navigate a reading around the question of, what is a man?.
The repetitive action of unpicking a man’s suit offers a method for tracking and reading a different kind of landscape, much in the same way that walking tracks the geographical landscape, as one foot follows the other. The suit is tightly stitched, it divides into four parts, the inner lining, the outer shell, the trousers, and the impenetrable pockets, which become a dysfunctional fascia of embellished seams, held together by layers of fragile interfacings and soft vulnerable cotton threads. Have you ever tried wearing one of these things? It feels like stepping into a cage fight with the self.
Participating 2024 in Radical Softness RAD24 and highly entangled in WAP24 and participatingin in BKN exhibition at SUPERMARKET in Stockholm.
During her stay she also worked on the curatorial concept "The Sky is Moving Sideways", in London September 2024.
I am a London based woman artist curator, born 1958, working in visual and live art; I work with my neurodivergent and ageing body.
My creative practice revolves around the activity of walking, which may or may not produce an artwork, however, the walking is critical to making artworks, and as I age, I notice an absence in my extremities, and walk, I must. I feel that in my walking I tune into my potential as a creative material, I remember more deeply, I visualise and know my internal landscape more clearly.
During 2023, I appeared in a solo exhibition ‘Discharging Materials’ at ‘The Surgery Gallery’, London, and the group show ‘Mother’s Ruin’ with the floor installation ‘Contagion’ at 35Blumen gallery in Krefeld Germany. In March, I led public Walking & Drawing wellbeing workshops, as part of Women’s History month, at The Feminist Library. I am currently an exhibiting artist in the ‘Artist Support Pledge 3’ exhibition, Huddersfield Art Gallery.
I have been funded by Arts Council England 2020, as Artist Curator of Sculpture Trail ‘Briefly IN-TRANSIT’; 2006 Artist Collaboration Kitchen Antics & Appliances, Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture.
PROPOSED WORK
I have been working with the material of hay, as a representation of generational time and space, and would be interested in getting to know the Bjorko Konstnod site and environment to source other types of organic materials with which to explore and develop hand-build processes.
I would also enjoy the opportunity to become accountable regarding creative practice through reading and writing, and participate in conversations about awareness in the body, tuning into our surroundings, through ways of moving on our feet.
