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)
2013-2020
in 2013 I moved to London with the aim of starting a cinema that would be a meaningful contribution to a community, enhancing access not just to culture but to making decisions about culture, and a contribution to the wider capital’s film ecology.
I assembled a small group of people who were interested in setting up a cinema along the lines described. We identified a building in Deptford which had been derelict for fifteen years or so - the location was important because Deptford is in Lewisham, which at the time was one of only two London boroughs with no dedicated cinema of any kind. I designed a model which would allow us to take a long-term commercial lease over the building, renovate it for our purposes and then to operate as a non-heirarchical volunteer-run arts organisation. We carried the first stages of the plan out as a small group, but the aim was to grow the organisation into a large group of volunteers from the local borough and across the city who would build and operate the cinema together.
On 12th July 2014 we held our first public meeting, where the project was outlined to a group of 50 or so volunteers who were in attendance. From that date onwards we held weekly public meetings, initially using a consensus methodology I had based upon work at the Star and Shadow Cinema (Newcastle Upon Tyne) and other projects, and slowly adapting this model to the needs of the group and our activities.
Over the following year the building was renovated including a 40-seat screening room, bar/social space and ancilliary facilities. Almost every aspect of this was undertaken by a growing group of volunteers, numbering nearly 1000 people who had been involved in some capacity or another by the time the first stage of construction was complete. I brought in friend and architect David Dobereiner who worked with the group on the initial plans, which were then adapted by the group into a practical model which could pass building control and be carried out.
Parallel to this building work we set up a programming group, where we developed methods for programming a venue together based upon co-operative, non-heirarchical principles. The first screenings took place on the ground floor of the venue whilst it was a building site, and were used primarily as a way to get people involved in the organisation. Once the screening room was complete it became much easier to constantly programme, and the cinema moved from being an organisation in set-up to a functioning cinema with constantly improving facilities.
We also developed ways to run the organisation together. The weekly meetings were the heart of this - open public events where every key decision about the operation of the cinema is made, and where every attendee has an equal say over the cinema’s operation.
Over the next few years the organisation continued to develop: programming increased from a very early average of one screening a week to a full programme with films and events every night of the week. We fostered partnerships with organisations across the city and far beyond, and won numerous awards for our programming and organisation. We successfully raised money through numerous rounds of crowdfunding and public grants to improve the building’s facilities, the quality of film projection, our community work and more.
The cinema became a much-loved part of London’s film ecology, celebrated locally and across the city, and known for its work much further afield. Volunteers made the decision to close it permanently during the 2020 pandemic, when the close physical community it was designed to foster was not possible.