BIRD DOLLS

The Hastings Rarities Affair was an ornithological scandal of alleged deception & fraud in the bird world, which came to light in 1962.  The story has never quite been verified, but local taxidermist, George Bristow, is seen by many as the most likely candidate- accused of bringing rare birds into the country & presenting them as locally shot examples.

Thirteen artists worked together in collaboration with Hastings Museum & Art Gallery- which houses the Rarities archive & collection-  to produce an exhibition of contemporary works exploring this curious tale and its legacy.

I created a number of 'bird dolls', housed in a heavy glass-lidded museum cabinet: some taxidermy dressed in scraps, jewels & shrouds; others disfigured dolls with beaks of sharks teeth, & adorned with cat's whiskers and feathers, and with their own sets of grave goods.

PIGEON PRINT WALLPAPER

To launch a new arts space in a former derelict shop on Queens Road, Hastings, a group exhibition was put together which reflected it's previous use, and to mark it's reincarnation. It was a hastily-assembled exhibition, and with little-to-no budget to speak of.

I fell back to a favourite tried and tested technique of lino printing; producing a half-sized pigeon lino cut, which I printed onto newsprint, and painstakingly cut out, and pasted to a sheet of tattered old wallpaper, approx. 10ft long. The birds formed an orderly pattern until about halfway down the sheet, when in free fall they gradually tumbled out of line.

CHOCOLATE NEST

Following on from my work on the Bird Woman, I took part in an exhibition 'Let Them Eat Cake', and being close to Easter time, I made a hanging nest (based on that constructed by the Montezuma Oropendola bird) from the traditional chocolate and shredded wheat, but woven into a chicken wire armature.

I aim to develop this project into something larger-scale, hanging a number of nests from beams/ trees etc as a site-specific intervention, and experimenting with the nests of different kinds of birds.

THE BIRD WOMAN DRESS

I began to form the character of the Bird Woman whilst surrounded by the gulls and pigeons on my street, who nested, fought, squawked & cooed on the roofs and balconies, maintaining a cluttered territory of mess, feathers and twigs. 

I was fascinated by the people at the edges of society- the neighbour who fed the pigeons in the night & was awarded an ASBO; the woman in the town who scares the birds with her pet owl, but whose house was raided revealing the bodies of many dead and rotting creatures inside. I began to form a dress for my Bird Woman, torn and theatrical- I drew faint birds directly on to the cloth, & decorated the collar and hem with dirty feathers & twigs collected from the beach. In character, I wore the dress during Hastings Jack in the Green 2009, moving silently through the crowds, hair in disarray, blackened eyes, and a crow on my shoulder. The dress has not been finished, but I plan to produce a train of feathers, and complete the trimmings for  future performances or installation.

OBJECTS FROM THE JEU DE BALLES FLEA MARKET

Mainly Unclassified was an exhibition at London College of Communication, featuring the personal archives of staff, researchers and associates of the Photography & the Archive Research Centre.

I showed two collections, both from the Jeu de Balles flea market in Brussells, a vast sweep of junk and antiques that takes over the square every weekend. The first was a number of passport photos I had found from a number of stalls. The second was a strange assortment of ephemera: photos, booklets and trinkets all left behind to be swept away as the market drew to a close.

BEDROOM ALTARPIECE(S)

As a student I inherited an enormous amount of things from my grandparents, whose house was cleared at that time. As well as thousands of photographs, negatives and slides, this included many domestic objects: crockery books, lamps, clothing, and snippets of their lives: old letters, notebooks carefully documenting MOT dates, and hearing aid batteries. These objects hinted at a past only partially understood, and as well as surrounding myself with them, and using them, I built small installations influenced by Mexican home altars & junk shop displays.