I am a visual artist with a studio at Spike Island, Bristol I share with my four-legged studio assistant Harry.
My practice fuses sculpture, ceramics, painting, performance and sound, and has recently expanded to include spinning and weaving. Materials-led and site-responsive, she works with foraged, discarded, wasted and gifted materials.
Drawing from personal narratives, my work explores materially embodied human experiences and processes of fragility, loss, repair and growth, alongside precarious ecologies. These encounters are often approached in a deeply embodied, wet and muddy way. Central to my practice is an understanding of breakdown and care — of matter, objects and more-than-human ecologies — as a necessary precursor to ongoing processes of repair, re-formation and life-making.
An installation of my work was included in the exhibition Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, curated by Lubaina Himid, Royal West of England Academy (2023) and a group show at Eastside projects (2024). I curated the group show ‘ECO|CON’ (The Launderette and a second iteration at Spike Island, 2023); and co-produced ‘Isn’t Bite Also Touch?’ an event on contagion and desire with artist-writer Jack Young (Spike Island, 2022).
Support (2022/4) includes Arts Council DYCP, Spike Studios bursary, Ideas Exchange funding from The Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol and a West of England Visual Arts Alliance R&D bursary.
I was awarded an art-practice-based PhD in cultural geography from University of Exeter (funded by the AHRC, 2016) and an MA Fine Art (Falmouth 2010) for which I received the Sandra Blow Prize for Excellence. I have held lecturing positions at both universities (2011 - 17). I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Previously, I worked for many years in the third sector and later in community development as a project development officer for Penwith District Council, Cornwall. Highlights include setting up charities The Balsam Centre and The Growing Space in Wincanton, Somerset.
Photo credit Lisa Whiting