A Royal College of Art graduate I am a photographer and educator making and researching transitional moments in women’s lives and how we navigate them, through ritual. The work often considers these moments from an experiential and non clinical position, allowing time and significance for first hand experience. I am often fighting against a perceived wisdom and breaking taboos. It might be seen as pushing against something or raising significance to subjects that go unheard, un-understood, seen as unnecessary. Throughout my art practice I have worked around themes of womanhood and in particular the connection between ancient and contemporary womanhood.
I often work in collaboration, Re framing Menopause (In Plain Sight Unseen), across disciplines as I find multidisciplinary approaches to research, to be productive and insightful. I promote this through both teaching and research methodologies. The curriculum developed as Course Director for BA (hons) Photography at London College of Communication, University of The Arts, London is an example of this as are the collaborations listed below. I was awarded An Education Award from the Royal Photographic Society in 2019 for my contribution to photography education and became a senior fellow of the Higher Education Authority in 2020.
I am a member of Photography and the Contemporary Imaginary Research hub, hosting exhibitions, conferences and publications and the co-founder of Writing Photographs along with Wiebke Leister. In this project we explore the multiple and varied approaches to text and image relationships, in an installation context. This project has three strands: 1. our research interests for which we have run a symposium and a conference at Tate Modern and hope to make a publication. 2. the pedagogic research for which we have run an extensive talks and workshops programme devised for a group of alumni, PhD and current photography BA and MA students. 3. Our dissemination methods through sharing and devising workshops for others to use.
The work produced in this project has been on exhibition in May 2017 in Art Academy in London and October 2019.
I am also co founder of After School Collective Strategies working with picLondon to design a public programme consisting of a series of talks and workshops, and culminating in a public exhibition and panel debate. This programme explores collective ways of working both conceptually and in action and how these might be helpful to early career artists.
Creative Transformations is a collaborative project working with Sal Anderson and Neil Armstrong. Using anthropological and artistic methodologies we ask: Why when we know that being creative is identified as being good for our well being, do so many art students present themselves with mental health concerns? How as art educators, can we employ creative practices to enable students, who present with low risk mental health, to developing more serious mental health conditions.