I am a socially-engaged visual artist. I work principally with moving image, making standalone artists' film and installations. My work often plays with mainstream and accessible forms – documentary, music video, magazine – so as to move beyond a traditional gallery audience.
I am interested in who makes work, how, why, for whom, and why that matters. I often produce work within a discrete community or interest group, making work with a personal connection to my collaborators and broader social relevance. I want to celebrate and make visible the joy of the making process itself and explore its value for individual and collective growth and change. I develop processes to enable diverse groups of people to make work together. This focus is mirrored in the subject matter of my work, which deals with themes around our social environment and relationships with one another.
Details of shows, talks, teaching, awards etc lives here.
Curatorial work lives here.
My film work is produced by satellite, an artist-led production company.
In 2020 I set up artists’ imprint bored.of.works.
I occasionally assist other artists and friends in a technical capacity - as Director of Photography, experimental film consultant, photographer, that kind of thing. Details of that work lives here.
2023
An Intermission acquired by Arts Council England for the National Art Collection (UK)
2022
Selected - Lodestars - Film London (London, UK)
Prophecy - Mead Gallery (Coventry, UK)
2021
Jury Member - International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) (Amsterdam, NL)
Aesthetica Art Prize - longlist (UK)
Baltic Open (Gateshead, UK)
2020
Bloomberg New Contemporaries (UK)
Trellis Commission - UCL Culture (London, UK)
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA): Best Children’s Documentary Award - Jury Special Mention (Amsterdam, NL)
Gasworks Residency (London, UK)
2019
British Film Institute (BFI)/DocSociety Made Of Truth Award (UK)
Guardian/Joseph Rowntree Foundation Award - Doc/Fest (Sheffield, UK)
Constellations - UP Projects/Flat Time House (London, UK)
2023-present
Over Autumn 2023 I worked with groups of young people in Alternative Provision in Tower Hamlets to make work that spoke to their experiences and identities, exploring issues of power, perception, art, mental health and education. In December 2023 we held an exhibition together in a vacant shop which we transformed into a gallery.
Supported by: Chisenhale Gallery, London East Alternative Provision
Funded by: Arts Council England, Freelands Foundation, Action for Bow
Install photography showing first Never Sleep exhibition in Chisenhale Project Space, 2023
H Is For Hostile Environment is a moving image work made in collaboration with researcher Dr Keren Weitzberg. The work aims to provide a space for people who have suffered under the UK’s border regime to speak about their experiences, whilst also celebrating the rich contribution that people who’ve moved to the UK from overseas have made to our shared social and cultural life.
The work comprises 26 sections, each made in collaboration with a partner who has first-hand experience of the issues at hand. Each section is developed, and then collaboratively made, together.
The Hostile Environment is the name given by then-Home Secretary Theresa May to a basket of government policies which aimed to co-opt large parts of UK society into policing the UK’s borders - from doctors to landlords, employers, homeless services and more. The policy had the stated aim of combatting ‘illegal immigration’ but had real-world, devestating effects on the lives of many thousands of people who live in the UK with migrant heritage. Its most notorious effect was the Windrush Scandal, where large numbers of people of Caribbean heritage, who had lived in the UK for decades and should have enjoyed full citizenship rights, were barred from employment, healthcare, education, benefits and more, and faced mass deportation at the hands of the Home Office.
The film was exhibited at much-loved community venue the Rio Cinema, Dalston, by Chisenhale Gallery, and at UCL East.
Supported by: UCL Culture, Arts Council England
film trailer
production stills from H is for Hostile Environment
2018-20
Since summer 2018 I’d been spending time with a group of young people (14-21) in Stoke on Trent, UK, who were experiencing homelessness.
At the centre of the project is an artists’ film made in collaboration with that group of young participants. The intention was to make a work that spoke to an audience who are not familiar with their way of life, and for the group to feel represented on screen in a genuine way.
I taught members of the group how to use high-end film equipment, which we often operated together. Alongside this I led informal workshops in photography and creative writing, and participants documented their own lives using 35mm photography, showing what they’d done to the rest of the group each week. We watched films about homelessness and precarity, and talked about the way people in that situation are represented. Participants led a small tour of places that had meaning for them around the city, curated a public exhibition in a city centre art gallery, and wrote bits of text to those in the outside world who haven’t experienced the things that they have.
The overwhelming feeling I had from the young people who took part was a desire to be seen as human beings - people who laugh, cry, are angry and happy, and who have unique experiences and something to say. Together we tried to make a piece of work which did some justice to that.
The film’s collaboratively-made soundtrack, Intermission Music, is being released as an limited artists’ edition run of 500 vinyl records with all profits going to young people who’ve experienced homelessness.