I’m an artist and writer.
I work with text, image, video and performance making work about voice, writing and acting. I’m interested in words and how we say them, either written, verbally, silently; by occupying a space together, by being apart. Script, authorship and stage feature in my work.
My practice explores how we form in response to others, as a work of relief perhaps, according to the spaces and gaps that another’s physical and psychic form allow. So power eventually, I look at power.
My recordings and performances – direct readings of my text, poetry and dialogues – are an attempt to clarify the author’s voice and anchor it permanently to the text.
I publish, exhibit and perform widely, most recently with The Poetry Society, Leeds Art Gallery, The Poetry Archive, Leeds Summer Group Show, Axis, Leeds Poetry Festival, Chemistry, 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Winchester Poetry Festival, Leeds Playhouse, Spelt Magazine, Soanyway Magazine, LEEDS 2023 and Leeds Museums & Galleries.
My work has been shortlisted for the 2019 Bridport Poetry Prize, 2020 National Poetry Competition, 2022 Winchester Poetry Prize and published with The Poetry Society, The Poetry Archive and Spelt Magazine. I am a winner of Poetry Archive Now 2022 and a recipient of a Creative Access Bursary 2023. My poetry collection THE BELL TOWER is published with The Emma Press.
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Statement
The written work I produce is a text that forms a central framework or script to subsequent iterations in live, video and audio formats. These are all sculptural. The text is the first materialisation. All attempt Voice. I define Voice as any manifestation of a personal statement, feeling or presence. This iteration could be unspoken, unwritten, articulated through any means. Crucially, I define Voice as something expressed and transmitted; it almost always has some urgency and necessity. A value. In my own practice, Voice also means the act of speaking.
When I repeat my written work out loud, whether live or recorded, I’m attempting to not perform the work. I’m attempting to locate the original inner voice with which I first heard or saw the words scroll in my head. Subsequent photographic, audio or video works are also attempts to depict these images or streams of consciousness. In this sense, I create a volume or series of work, I, II, III –
Some of my written works are a stream of consciousness, these pieces require few edits or revisits. They may be more successful. By stream of consciousness I suppose I mean spontaneous – but also my consciousness is, by habit, very author-ly.
Much of my written work sits within poetry and I’m happy to be included and asked to participate as a writer in this field. Sometimes I feel like I visit poetry and I’m grateful to those who welcome me. I think I’m still working out what people mean by poetry. I’m curious about abandoning, expanding or changing the term poetry. I may meet resistance to this.
As an artist speaking the words that I write, I’m interested in anchoring my authentic voice to the text, I want to avoid a performative voice – this is a work in progress. I’m interested in how I fail at this.
When I write, when I speak, when I’m with you – it should be me you experience. As close to. I accept that Stanislavski may be in there somehow.
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To find her, you look for reference.