Correspondence involves collecting, cataloguing, archiving and research in order to rephotograph British tourist postcards from the late 1960s onwards. The postcard sender's message is adopted as the title for each piece, everyday words and memories that find a life beyond that of their original propriety. The act of reworking these images and applying a strangers words, is a conversation (a correspondence) with the past.
2007- present
Installation at The CASS Bank Space Gallery, London Metropolitan University, 2016
In this ongoing series of work every frame of each short film I make is compressed into a single photograph that creates a ghostly retinal after-image, a memory of the film. The photo forms a single static embodiment of the entire film. Using a technique of super-long exposures to transform 'moving images' into a single still, the process overlays all the frames of a film on top of one another and creates a visual and temporal compression. Time is literally halted, scenes from the film become ethereal remnants, reminders of the time they were on screen.
2020 - present
Say When Compression
I Will Become Compression
Tools Compression
Journal Compression
Everything Is Compression
Long View Compression
Spores Compression
Adhering to formal and intellectual elements from romantic landscape painting these photographs depict a journey through an alternate English landscape. Digitally composited from several exposures they present idealised views similar to computer generated architectural visuals, often with features repeated such as the sky used in several images.
The terrain featured is dominated by man-made structures whilst natural features have been manipulated to suit human needs. In many ways these are contrived places; familiar yet somehow different, somewhere but at the same time nowhere.
Photographic prints, Artist's book, Postcards, 2011
Installation at The Catlin Art Prize 5th Anniversary Exhibition, The Tramshed, Shoreditch, London, 2011
A collection of new photographs and archive images of skies manipulated to appear uncannily blue, flawless and imply a positive future. The images are printed using inks that slowly degrade when subjected to sunlight and purposely fade over time suggesting that optimism is a valuable yet fragile state of mind.
Working with the London Metropolitan Police Safer Neighbourhoods Team selected works were developed for display outside Police stations across East London.
UV sensitive ink jet prints, 2012
Installation at Isle of Dogs Police Station, London, 2012
Optimism Revisited, 52 Skies
Installation at Bow Road Police Station, London, 2012
With London Borough of Waltham Forest acting as one of the five host boroughs for the 2012 Olympics this work was part of a project documenting local sporting activities leading up to the games. Promoting the Olympic ideal that it is taking part not winning that counts, photography collective Image 17 sought out and documented the many sporting activities bringing people together throughout the Borough. The project focuses on the wide variety of talent and skill from members of diverse communities.
Being an outlying borough of London, the region is comprised of built-up urban areas and suburban natural spaces. I intended to portray the relationship between the sports participants and the diverse landscape found in Waltham Forest. Time plays a critical role in sport. An athlete’s performance is measured in split seconds and a football match can be won or lost in an instant. The photos portray the relationship between sports people and time as well as capturing a sense of commitment, training all hours and in any conditions.
C-type Prints, 2012
Cowley Boys FC
East London Triathletes
Eton Manor Athletics Club
Lee Valley Golf Club
London Evening Standard Newspaper, March 2012
Depictions of a semi-detached house brought together to construct an archive of components - found images, large format photographs, digitally manipulated images, publications and audio work.
Utilitarian domestic housing from this period is an archetype of standardisation and suburban uniformity. However, the prosaic ordinariness of these houses belies the unique individual dramas that play out within.
Hornby Railways considered that this particular building in Margate epitomised life in towns and cities in the UK during the late 20th century and chose this individual house on which to base their 'R.275 Modern House' model kit.
Each work in the series is given a reference number forming a visual archive, a 'kit of parts' with which to describe contemporary suburban life.
2012
Influenced by vintage postcards this series depicts views of east London as 1970s idealised picture postcard images transforming them into hyperreal places of interest.
C-Type prints, 2010
Carpenters Road
Hollow Pond
Central Parade
Town Hall
Coronation Gardens
Link Road
Friendship Way
Argon Road
The Walthamstow Tapestry (after Grayson Perry)
A 15 metre installation documenting the lives and surroundings of inhabitants of the London Borough of Waltham Forest. A community focussed exhibition by photography collective Image 17 in unused office space in Wathamstow. The salon hang of 142 photographic prints emulates the narrative and scale of Grayson Perry’s eponymous artwork. Twelve photographers took part exploring themes such as the cycle of Life from birth to death, advertising and consumerism.
By working in collaboration with each other, the artists were able to challenge the way they work, the nature of ownership and reflect on collective responsibility within the local community. Each artist's work was interspersed with the others, operating on multiple levels creating connections picture by picture, developing series within series, ultimately creating a single large collective visual journey spread out and displayed as part of a single group installation.
The exhibition was held at Tower Mews a large vacant new building opposite Walthamstow’s central station. The central position meant the exhibition was easily accessible and attracted overt a thousand visitors during its ten day duration.
The work was widely publicised and included in the press previews attended by several national Art publications and a selection of daily tabloids held by the E17 Art Trail prior to the public opening.
The private view was attended by members of the community that featured in the Tapestry, together with artists, gallery owners, press and representatives from arts organisations, Tate Gallery, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Oona King, Stella Creasy MP and Jennette Arnold OBE.
Documentation of an evening at the Ex-Servicemens Club in Leytonstone, East London, established in 1922 and still thriving. The photo-essay focuses on the fabric and ephemera of the club and its members. The photographs are exhibited in frames sourced from second-hand shops from the area.
C-type prints, 2009
Meet: Photographs of Local Social Groups
Co-curated exhibition of community engaged photographs by photography collective Image 17 at The Old Glass Factory in Wathamstow, East London, 2009.
The project documented the plethora of local leisure and social groups within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. Fourteen Photographers took part, documenting thirty local hobby and leisure groups ranging from the familiar to the highly unusual, celebrating the diversity of characters and activities in Waltham Forest.
The exhibition was widely publicised and resulted in interviews on the Robert Elms Radio show for BBC Radio London, local and national press coverage.
The exhibition was held in the industrial style premises of an old glass factory and held over the four days of the 2009 Art Trail. A private view was attended by guests, including the groups that featured in Meet together with artists, gallery owners, press and representatives from arts organisations, including, Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, The Sunday Times and local newspapers.
In Fantasia time is simultaneously suspended and sped up. Made during the magic hour the pictures reveal a twilight world where fairground machines frantically spin whilst people are frozen in time.
In my own memories of visits as a child and depictions in popular culture, the fairground can be a place of fun, excitement and wonder whilst at the same time, somehow unsettling. At twilight, a liminal moment in time, the threshold between day and night, the fairground comes to life. The pictures reveal an uncanny world that exists somewhere between childhood and adulthood.
16 × 24 inch (40.5 x 61cm), C-type prints, 2006
