Over 400,000 bees, there, in front of me, behind, everywhere, striking terror into my heart. I have just created a piece for Salt Road (saltroad.org) playing on the emotions that this sound creates. Always fearful of bees, it required such a huge effort to be absolutely calm during recording, I just wanted to sleep afterwards.
The second of the exhibitions that I have curated has just opened. What a steep learning curve it has been. I don’t think I understood how time-consuming it was, especially in thinking time. And so many lists! The exhibition, Things You Didn’t know You Didn’t Know is open until May 9th so this is only the start. Initial thoughts on the learning process are that time and money are essential; it is a creative process that has sat nicely alongside my own practice; it has created insights from a different perspective that couldn’t be gained in any other way: the project management of a defined process will benefit throughout my practice and research. I wouldn’t have missed the opportunity and I am grateful to Jackie Berridge of Harrington Mill Studios for the opportunity.
Through installation, expanded sculpture, photography and film and sometimes pseudo-scientific experiments, I am trying to create a dialogue between space and place using interventions and interruptions as part of a site-specificity that explores in-between spaces, inside and outside, nowhere and somewhere. I use temporary, ephemeral and provisional interruptions, to locate, re-locate and re-contextualise territory referencing what has been, what is or what could be, the past, the present and the future and where it intersects with the human relationship. They often refer to incidental happenings that create a transformation of objects. The notion of absence, as possibility rather than lack, is an underlying theme within the concepts of territory, whether historical, political, geographical, cultural as well as how it is colonized, altered, used and navigated and, relating to this, place and placelessness.Â
