UAL First Year Symposium

Give a 5-minute presentation that discusses your most recent practice acting as an introduction to your work and research proposal for your fellow students and tutors. We recommend that you prepare an illustrated talk using images or video of your work.

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Recent Practice

Key techniques used as part of my process are Collage, Printmaking, Sculpture, Photography and Video incorporating found objects into the artwork.

I consider all of my work to reflect the way I view the world we live in. My work subconsciously considers social and political issues that arise as part of the practice I have developed.

When I start a piece of work I research newsworthy events that have happened in the world, in particular from a social and political viewpoint. My artwork is often a reflective observation of these events where the general population has in some way been mistreated by an overriding power, such as the residing government/politicians of the time.

My most recent work (between 2016 and 2018) presented here has been about issues that relate to Diaspora and began after some research into a local building called Tedder House in Llandudno, North Wales, named after Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, who in World War 2 was known for his strategy the ‘Tedder Carpet’ the practice of concentrated carpet bombing in support of the Allied Forces, tactics that continue to be used in today’s modern warfare.

I began researching the Syrian war, which has been ongoing for five years and during this part of my research I became aware of the many upsetting images on the internet from the Syrian war. These images had a considerable psychological effect upon me and this then became the impetus for an installation. What affected me the most was the effects of the Syrian War on the lives or ordinary women and children living in Syria and particularly Aleppo.

I then began to reflect further on World War 2 and the effect of this war on the women and children in my local area and the evacuation of children from the UK cities into more rural areas – in this case from Liverpool to Caernarfon.

This next body of work explored the historical events associated with the evacuation of children from British inner cities during the Second World War. Many children were evacuated from Liverpool to towns and villages across the North Wales coast, including Caernarfon. Inspired by Hannah Hoch, the artist collected found objects from the era, reproduced photographs and propaganda materials to be used in the photo collage, A suitcase photo collage was created, brimming with memories from WW2 relating to the threat against Britain’s inner cities, the propaganda, and the experience of being evacuated from Liverpool to Caernarfon during this period. After reading many personal accounts of these events, the artist devised a collection of bi-lingual statements that appear to reflect the general sentiment felt by the evacuees, their parents and the prospective foster communities.

The focus of my next work was an attempt to look at the refugee crisis through the eyes of those experiencing these circumstances first hand, the refugees themselves, their experience, their treatment, the barriers and the stereotyping that they face on a daily basis.

A long-held belief that humanity, dignity and respect are basic human rights that everyone deserves irrespective of his or her circumstances, the refugee crisis highlights the lack of humanity in our society today.

Inspired by the increasing efforts of many artists to raise awareness of the refugee crisis, in particular, Ai Wei Wei and the Migration Museum, I wanted to create work that says, “Look at how these people are treated, this could be you or me”. Ultimately I ended up with an installation of blankets made from materials that could be used in a Refugee Camp for temporary shelter.

My next collection of work considered being decoupled from a homeland and the experience of dispersal that a subsequent journey of migration can bring. A reflection of an individual state of being and a sense of rootlessness and longing, indicates a sub-conscious social-political element relating to the subject of Diaspora.

An outsider was symbolized using a chair covered with fragments of road maps. This juxtaposed that sense of rootedness with rootlessness and in-betweenness.  It was taken on a migratory journey between a host country and a homeland. Ultimately, being cut in two to constitute two parts and divided roots. This journey was then recorded using photography and film.

Reflecting on the work that I had produced between 2016 and this point (early 2018) I began to make some connections that not just reflected the issue of Diaspora but the associations of my work with historical events that continue to have relevance in our society today. I completed this two year period of reflection on Diaspora with a body of work that related to historical events that took place near to the locality that I live.

A site-specific piece about the construction of the reservoir Llyn Celyn, flooding the Tryweryn Valley and demolishing the village of Capel Celyn in the process. This piece is a continuation of an ongoing theme relating to displacement. In this case, the displacement of the village residents to provide water to Liverpool. The events that happened at the time also prompted a strong sense of Welsh Nationalism and calls for Devolution which continue to this day.