sitespecific and collaborative artworks

Olympic Ripples - collective memory bench

In the tradition of benches with commemorative dedications, the surface of the bench is embedded with memories of 2012, celebrating the Olympic and Paralympic games and the volunteers that 'Made it Happen'.

This bench acts as an object of collective experience and memory. It was made during the Molten Festival 2012 by residents of Barking, who co-authored the work by adding their individual inscriptions.

The bench captures the unique voices of Barking residents.

Water is the central motif of the piece: the Olympic logo ripples into waves, currents of memories flow and intersect, and Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, who won Britain's first Olympic gold medals of London 2012, are depicting rowing their boat through a the river of words.

The bench was created by different members of the community, including children, adults, volunteers, the Mayor and Sebastian Coe.

The handwritten inscriptions were engraved into the bench's surface, making the text looks as though it seeped into the wood.

The surfaces of the bench form a printing block to collect the memories and turn them into prints.

Prints of the bench accompany the work.

Members of the public can make rubbings using crayons or pencils on paper. The bench becomes an open book from which stories can be freely reproduced.

Commissioned by Barking Council as part of Molten Festival
created and installed at Barking Learning Centre

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Out of Darkness Cometh Light

Artwork for a new school building in Bilston, commissioned by Project Dandelion.
The wall piece references the history of the Black Country.
Made through a collaborative engagement process with staff and students.

Artwork installed in September 2012.

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If Wishes Were Birds - Wall drawing created with residents of Sceaux Gardens estate.

Initially intended as a visual metaphor that linked the seperate blocks around the estate, the wishing wall idea was developed during a six-month residency that forms part of the South London Gallery Making Play programme. During this residency I tested collaborative methods of creating narratives with local children and families around the estate. I was interested in using fiction as play, exploring how stories can be used as meeting places and a way of bringing the community together. The wishing wall aimed to open paths of communication, allowing people to express their thoughts and feelings about their neighbourhood and the changes that are taking place. The creative process of building a wishing wall was aimed to provide a positive shared experience for the community. Making the wishes visible was a way of allowing further dialogues to emerge.

Process
This artwork for the mural was made with the children of Sceaux Gardens, who created their own shadow-puppets characters and storyline. Their puppets were turned into graphics for the mural by designer Johanna Brinton.

To include as many residents as possible we set out workshop activities in public spaces around the estate, and begun the workshops with a 'wishing-egg' painting activity during the Easter holidays, the idea being that the wishing-eggs later hatched into the birds in the mural,

Bird shadow-puppet used for the final artwork.

Cardboard Wishing Bird made during the workshop.

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The East London Sukkah

An interfaith art intervention in Brick Lane to celebrate the autumn harvest and the diversity of London.

The sukkah is a temporary outdoor construction traditionally set up by neighbours during the Jewish Sukkot holidays. Set up by Heather Ring and Openvizor, this installation provided a space for people of different faiths to enjoy. This Sukkah was created through a series of collaborative workshops with local schools, students and faith groups, including the East London Mosque, two local primary schools and illustration students from the London Metropolitan University. The Sukkah was then used as an exhibition space and for a series of talks and workshops themed around food, faith and sustainability.

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Interprative Artwork for Museums Sheffield

A site-specific, interpretive artwork in response to the William Hogarth exhibition Industry and Idleness, made in collaboration with Museums Sheffield Youth Forum (-see workshops and residencies page). The final artwork is a snakes-and-ladders floor vinyl that combines drawings, motifs, sequential comic-strips and a mutli-choice questionairre made by different members of the Youth Forum, forming a polyphonic visual piece that brings focus illuminates themes in William Hogarth's work and invites viewers to play in the gallery space and interact with the artwork.. March- May 2009, Graves Gallery, Museums Sheffield.

Bus Shelter arwork outside Gloucester Road tube, London, February 2011

Created collaboratively with young people from the Ismaili Centre, commissioned by the London Transport Museum.

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Bus Shelter artwork outside Gloucester Road tube, London, February 2011

Created collaboratively with young people from the Ismaili Centre, commissioned by the London Transport Museum.

The project was themed around journeys. Calligraphy and zoomorphic imagery was used to create the final work. .

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The Big Draw - 'The World in a Gallery' A two-week participatory exhibition at the Apthorp gallery in which a large-scale drawing landscape turned the walls of the Apthorp gallery into pages of a colouring in book. Visitors were invited to continue the drawings and bring the landscape to life. Artsdepot October 2008

Crocodile City

Crocodile city on the final day of the exhibition

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The Lost Gods of England

A site-specific intervention based on the idea of lost gods, and the library as a place that links the present to other worlds.

Created in response to a brief set byRednile projects, who were looking to commission site-responsive works for the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle, UK.

After typing in the word lost in the Literary and Philosophical Society catalogue, I discovered a book called The Lost Gods of England by Brian Branston. I was inspired to make a project themed around this book, but found that it was missing.

Instead, I proposed to create a project that reintroduces the missing book back into the library collection, and with it, the lost gods of England. As well as finding a copy of the book and donating it to the library, the pieceincluded mini-theatrical interventions in the space based on the pre-Christian gods of England that the book describes.

Brian Branston's book discusses how these gods were oblitarated out of public memory, and intentionally written out of history by the Church. Only faint traces of these heathen gods appear, mostly in place names, days of the week, and other fragmented evidence.

The main piece, I proposed to create is an image/relief made by turning rows of books the other way round.. Here a trace of a figure is superimposed onto text, deliberately shifting the bias of word over image, a reverse of power of the heather gods which were largely worshiped by an illiterate society.

Image in Shelf Using Reversed Books

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If Wishes Were Horses, and other Nursery Rhymes

Drawings inspired by nursery rhymes for the wall, columns and plinths of the Saison poetry library, Royal Festival Hall, commissioned by the South Bank Centre, 2010.

This Little Piggy

I'm a Little Teapot

If Wishes Were Horses, and other Nursery Rhymes - Wall mural for Saison poetry library, Royal Festival Hall 2010

Drawings inspired by nursery rhymes for the wall, columns and plinths of the Saison poetry library, Royal Festival Hall, commissioned by the South Bank Centre, 2010.

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Wanted is an art trail consisting of drawings and words disguised as adverts that convey thoughts and feelings about mental health issues as they are experienced and perceived, inspired by conversations with Creative Routes members. Creative Routes is an organisation based in South London, run by and for people who have experienced mental ill health. The project was commissioned by Creative Routes in collaboration with the South London Gallery for Bonkerfest, a festival that sets to open discussion about issues surrounding mental health through public art interventions. The drawings and text-pieces were created for the festival and exhibited in the classified ads section in nine newsagents' windows around Camberwell Green, as a public art intervention and a broken narrative.

Through a random cluster of adverts offering services and goods, an unpredictable and honest narrative is created collaboratively, reflecting the hopes, needs and desires of an imagined local community. Wanted inserted a secondary narrative that sits alongside the normal adverts, communicating personal voices whose only desire is to express themselves and be acknowledged.

This project is visually inspired by the direct language of the classified ads. Some of the drawings and text-based pieces sit between the gaps of other ads, interrupting the window display, while other pieces use the same visual language as real ads, and are in fact ads which have been collected and modified to include voices other than their own.

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