I am an artist based in Cardigan in West Wales, working across animation, moving image and digital media. I studied painting at Newcastle Polytechnic but became attracted to the possibilities of animation whilst experimenting with techniques in my fine art practice.
My work explores ideas at the heart of our relationships with place, landscape (internal and external) and the ‘natural’ world. I’m drawn to investigating links between the subjective, scientific and social/ historical aspects, especially those that are obscure or concealed.
Intensive periods of active research are integral to my creative process, frequently working with primary sources to shape my understanding and inform my explorations of contemporary mythos. Also central is a hybrid process of haptic and digital crafting, the temporal manipulation inherent in stop-motion animation is used to examine the agency of materials and our entanglement with more than human processes and timescales.
Often working place-sensitively, I observe, film and collect field samples. These objects and fragments of detritus are deployed to create animated assemblages, acting as triggers for the viewer: sometimes suggestive of a wider narrative or hidden processes at play behind the visible.
In 2019 I completed a two year Creative Wales fellowship from the Arts Council of Wales, developing practice-based research that considers contemporary manifestations of Genii Loci and how they might be used to question our human-centric viewpoint in a time of mass extinction. Part of this research, ‘Chain Home West’ , featured in the May 2020 edition of Moving Image Artist Journal alongside an article about the ideas and process behind the work.
In 2022 I was awarded the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod of Wales for my moving image work Sitelines, a response to Alan Garner’s cult novel The Owl Service.
A new work ‘What Is This That Is Coming?’, which recently showed in Sift at Wexford County Council, can be seen in exhibition at Turner House, Penarth from 3rd August as part of the group exhibition Agora.