If successful, I would use the Dover Prize bursary to develop Blue Lagoon, a new moving image work filmed around the Hartlepool coastline. The work may take the form of a single-channel or multi-channel film, with the potential to develop further sculptural or image-based elements depending on the exhibition context. It explores how industry, ecology, labour, and leisure coexist within the landscape, combining documentary and fictionalised elements. Set in a location where oil rigs are dismantled beside nature reserves and golf courses, the film reflects on how bodies and environments absorb pressure, whether through industrial waste, environmental toxicity, or illness, and how people continue to find moments of joy, resistance, or survival within this.
The bursary would fund research and filming in Hartlepool, enabling me to observe seasonal shifts and connect with local residents, including bird watchers, industrial workers, and healthcare professionals, some of whom I have personal ties to. It would also cover production costs such as camera and sound equipment hire, access to archival material, fees for collaborators and performers, and post-production time. I would like to host an informal workshop or screening during the research phase to invite local dialogue and reflect regional perspectives.
This opportunity would mark a significant development in my practice. It would support a longer-term, slower working process that I have honoured in the past and allow me to deepen my ongoing interests in labour and place. Much of my previous work has been produced on small budgets with fast turnarounds; the Dover Prize would enable more careful methods, new collaborations, and deeper engagement with site and community. The project also provides a way to process recent experiences of illness, particularly through collaborative work with my housemate, who is currently undergoing cancer treatment and spending time between London and Hartlepool.
Ultimately, I hope to create a reflective and visually layered film that connects personal, political, and ecological concerns and resonates with audiences in the North East and beyond.
Blue Lagoon is rooted in the Tees Valley and shaped by my relationship to the area. While based in London, I have familial and emotional ties to the North, and I’m interested in how art can be made with and about places without speaking over them. My approach is observational and research-led; I intend to build relationships with people living and working near Hartlepool to shape the film collaboratively and respectfully.
By premiering the work in Darlington, whether in a cinema, community space, or non-traditional venue, I hope to open up conversations about how we read landscapes: industrial, medical, and emotional. The film would be accessible and visually compelling, combining local specificity with wider, urgent themes such as ecological degradation, health inequality, and resilience.
The project would also connect with the region’s histories of labour and energy production while engaging a younger arts audience through screenings and discussions. I would love to collaborate with local organisations or students and contribute to the area’s growing cultural ecology. Through this, I hope Blue Lagoon will not only reflect the complexity of the region but also amplify its voices and artistic potential.
My practice explores the relationship between place, image, and power, often through moving image, live performance, and installation. I’m particularly interested in how bodies, environments, and narratives are represented, overlooked, or mythologised, and how this intersects with labour, identity, and lived experience. My work often weaves together social and personal narratives, using filmmaking to question the reliability of both the narrator and the image. I combine documentary observation with fictional and choreographed elements, drawing on voice, gesture, and visual metaphor. I’m drawn to different modes of image-making—from cinematic language to medical imaging and environmental monitoring—and how they shape our understanding of the body and the world. Sound plays a key role, connecting intimate and ambient textures and evoking emotional and atmospheric undercurrents. Much of my work is responsive to place, research, and material. I approach each project as an opportunity to grow artistically and intellectually, often working collaboratively and favouring slow, process-led methods that allow for intuition, experimentation, and exchange. Recent exhibitions and screenings include The Pen Theatre, London (2024), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022), Aesthetica Short Film Festival (2021), Chicago Underground Film Festival (2020), Glasgow International Film Festival (2020), and South Kiosk Gallery, London (2019). My last film was performed live using real-time video and sound mixing, exploring American landscapes of spectacle, excess, and collapse, and tracing the flattening effects of digital image culture. Blue Lagoon, my current project, continues these concerns while rooting them in the North East of England. It reflects my commitment to working more locally and attentively, engaging with the social, ecological, and personal histories that have shaped my own life and community. I see this work as a space to hold grief, humour, ambiguity, and resistance together, grounded in specific sites and lived experience.
BA Art Practice, Goldsmiths University of London 2012
MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art 2017
In 2019 I received Arts Council Project funding to work on ‘The Ripple’, a moving image work. The Ripple is a short film based on concepts of collective storytelling and mass hysteria. The film focuses on the 2015 incident in which forty pupils simultaneously fainted during a Remembrance Day assembly at Outwood Academy in Ripon, North Yorkshire (my hometown). Young actors, dancers and performers from Ripon and the surrounding area took part in filming between the 9th and 14th of July 2019. The work was shown in Ripon, London and Chicago USA. As part of the project funding I ran a series of workshops for teenagers covering filmmaking, storytelling and dance.
In 2025 I received DYCP funding to develop my skills in sound for live performance and film scores.
Alongside my art practice, I have worked as a Lecturer in Fine Art at Arts University Bournemouth (full-time, permanent until September 2024), and currently teach part-time at Kingston School of Art, as well as working as a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art. My creative ethos is grounded in a DIY spirit—much of my work has been self-organised alongside teaching and other jobs. I’ve co-organised, curated, and led numerous independent projects and opportunities, and while I’ve been fortunate to receive funding for some, much of my practice has developed through resourcefulness and collaboration. I care deeply about sharing ideas and creating space for exchange. For example, I currently run an informal film and sound club, where artists and friends gather to watch, listen, and discuss work in a supportive setting.
Professionally organised opportunities include:
I have hosted two screenings at The Pen Theatre in 2024, London. I performed in this screening and invited recent graduates from Fine Art courses to share work.
In 2022-23 I ran AV_CACHE at Spanners, London, with Jason Ramanah I ran an experimental audio-visual night; we held 3 nights and invited artists: James Connick, Paul Purgas, Imran Perretta, Kadeem Oak, Patrick Lawrie & Indee. Lifewater Records, Verity Birt & Genevieve Lutkin, Odd Spiral Rhea Storr, Esther, Chooc Ly Tan,
In 2015-17 I ran an extensive artists’ moving image screening programme that held 8 events in total in London, Leeds and Liverpool.
In 2016 – 2017 I helped organise Art Council England-funded residency DOREMI, based in multiple arts organisations in Cumbria
As part of my pedagogy, I ran sound seminars and presented this co-listening research in 2023, ‘Listening Lounge Expanding the Field: Rethinking Methodologies in British Art Research’, Paul Mellon Centre, London, 10-minute paper on pedagogy practice and listening.
No this would be the first opportunity,
Leeds Arts University Library’s collection holds my work.
2019 Momentary Glimpses: An Anthology on Contentedness, with JJ Chan
2018 Ambit 233, Summer Edition, launched at Tate Modern
Invited to be shown on 6x6project.com
2018 Doremi, Art Gene, Barrow-in-Furness, UK (ACE Funded)
2014 Tomma Rum, Artist Residency and Residency Exhibition, Sweden
Email: culshaw22@gmail.com
Address: Flat 56, John Ruskin Street, London, London, SE5 0XL, GB
Local Authority: Southwark, London
