Current Projects
Take Thick with The Light – we all come up together
This is a year long project funded by The National Heritage Lottery Fund.
Detail from a letter written by George Stopher in May 1915 to his mother as he waits to go over to France for the first time
The project examines the connection between heritage, art and wellbeing through a collection of letters written by two brothers, George and Albert Stopher from the village of Sweffling in Suffolk, which are held at the Suffolk Records Office. Both young men were killed on the Western Front within a few weeks of each other, in the spring of 1917.
Through stitching images of the Stopher family, the Suffolk landscape the project tells the story of a rural family and their experiences through the First World War.
For more information on this project click here: The Stopher Project
Conversations with Curators
Exhibition at Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk – 12 January to 29 March 2020
Conversations with Curators
This project came about through courses and workshops I have delivered with Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Underpinning this work was the aim to support well-being through engaging with and making a creative response to the collections held in local museums.
This project was a partnership between myself as artistic director of Lockarts – a Suffolk arts in mental health charity, Moyse’s Hall Museum staff and trustees and volunteers working with Lockarts.
A bird’s head used in the millinery trade to trim hats C. 1850-1950
Over a couple of years the idea for the project grew with the curators at the museum choosing objects with which they felt an affinity and the artists and writers responding to these objects. It was a very eclectic mix of objects that reflects the collections held at the Museum. It has been a real collaboration between the Museum and the artists with a constant flow and exchange of ideas and information. This experience has brought us closer together as a team, as we have supported and encouraged each other over the course of the project.
The Mummers, 2019 fabric, paper, wood
I made a cast of characters in different mediums that tell one version of the stories of the objects. The Mummers are puppets that hold the secrets of all the objects chosen by the curators. I imagine them being held high above the heads of people carrying them through the streets.
‘The Storytellers II’ 2019 packing tape, carriage from Museum collection
The Storytellers are the ghosts of characters that have passed through the lifetime of an object. The Fabulists sit in their towers weaving lies into their tales and whispering their words out into the world.
‘The Fabulists’ 2019 fabric, thread,ceramics
