The funding will be used to consolidate current ideas and existing work (Tin Gods, The Office of Arcana), and develop these in new directions. These works have common sets of concerns that indicate developments including reflexive interrogations of memories of two members of my family. My mother’s brothers Frank and John were working class, Roman Catholic (lapsed), and their lives, interests and dreams connect to my developing practice.
The works will continue with the series of cabinets and models, extending these to books of text, drawings, photographs, each centred on 7 sites on a journey through Wales, and a film that will use the books and models as primary source material. The creation of the books (short-run artists books initially) and the film (which will involve text, still photography, spoken narrative, and animation) will move my practice forward while building on existing works.
The majority of the funding will be used in the realisation and production of the books and the film. This would involve a process of research prior to the beginning of the award to identify specific collaborators, and the use of AA2A opportunities to provide access to technical assistance. I will utilise contacts with the sound artist and film maker Yannick Dauby, and with Central Booking of New York, for assistance, advice, and peer input.
The project focuses on ideas and correspondences that extend from the personal to the wider political and cultural realm. From Angle in Wales (the birthplace of the wife of Uncle John), the ruins of Chapel Bay Fort and RAF Angle, to the Castlemartin Firing Range, there is a path of time and conflict embedded in a landscape of great beauty.
A recently recognised goal underlying the work is to rescue the memory of my uncles, this underscored by the loss of an album of photographs of ruined cities in Germany in late 1945
A second is to reach beyond the traditional gallery with the mobile cabinets, the books, and the film, to underscore the importance of the memories of the working class.
This will be considered from two perspectives. The first is raising the profile of the arts in Darlington. To achieve this I will draw on past experience as a free-lance artist-educator at Tate Liverpool, and work with local groups to explore ideas around contemporary art. This will focus on the resource offered by my home city of Liverpool (the Tate, the Liverpool Biennial, FACT), to inculcate the concept of art as open to all, and as a driver of personal, and political, re-invigoration. As someone from a background where going to Higher Education is (still) unlikely, I feel it is necessary to open opportunities to all.
The second perspective concerns the promotion of the arts in Darlington to a wider audience. This will be achieved by drawing on my connections within the UK, specifically from Liverpool (again) and from Nottingham (where I undertook my PhD), and on my international contacts across the Far East and the USA. Such promotion will focus both on artists and on the creativity of the general population.
As I am currently ‘nomadic’, I will set up studio and live and work in Darlington for the second year of the funding.
My work is sculpture, installation, drawing, and writing, focused on a world that resonates with ghosts from the future. Imagery is drawn from old science-fiction television, contemporary events, the ruins that litter cities. The interiors are rabbit holes into the realms of the strange and conspiratorial, sets from unmade films, dream spaces at the edge of nightmares.
Materials are practical, quotidian – plywood, timber, cardboard, paint, light – with a dialogue between initial concepts and the construction of the work. The visual spatial appeal is the motor that drives the process, producing works that engage viewers on multiple levels.
Selected solo exhibitions
2025 Tin Gods, Project Space 110, Taipei, Taiwan
2023 Haunt, VT Arts Salon, Taipei, Taiwan
2022 The Office of Arcana, MoCA Studio Space, Taipei, Taiwan
2017 Space Station, SeeArt, Taipei, Taiwan. Curator K. Wang.
2017 Make it up as I go along, Common Art Space, Hsinchu, Taiwan
2015 The Chamber of Uncanny Objects, Museum of Archives, National Taiwan University (produced with student collaborators as part of residency/public art project). Organised by Shalom Arts Consulting and NTU
2015 A Cabinet of Curiosities, National Taiwan University (produced with student collaborators as part of residency/public art project)
Selected Group Exhibitions and projects:
2025 Fragments, 435 Art Zone, Banqiao, Taiwan
2023 The City & the City, group exhibition with Ray Kiang and Anna Moskova at O Bank Culture Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan.
2021 Embassy of Doggerland, exhibited in Transcodage, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab. Curated by C.S. Chiu and S.W. Tsai.
2020 Garden, Project produced as member of Empty Art Collective. Exhibited at Fuzhong MRT Station area, curated by Waley Art and organised by 435.
2019 – 2020 Silent Running, Project produced as member of Empty Art Collective. Exhibited at Songshan Cultural Park (2019) and Youth Park Wanhua (2020)
2018 Embassy, in Ask the Way, Keelung Harbour Biennial, Keelung, Taiwan. Curated by C.H. Kao.
2018 Ghost Library, in Cross-Domain Reading and Writing, Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan. Curated by L.T. Jian and Y.T. Po.
2017 – 2018 Station Three, in M Space, Formosa Sculpture Biennial, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Curated C.L. Liu
I studied at Foundation Level at the School of Art, Liverpool Polytechnic, from 1972 – 73, and then went to Lanchester Polytechnic (Coventry) to study BA (hons) Fine Art from 1973 – 1976.
In 1993 I undertook a MA in Sculpture at Winchester School of Art, graduating in 1994 with an award for best work. In 1998 I was awarded a scholarship for a PhD at Nottingham Trent University, which I completed 2004. The PhD research was both practice and theory, and the focus was on the relationship between museums and installations. The practical research formed a major installation for Wollaton Hall Natural History Museum in 2001
In 2025 I was accepted as a member of the Royal Sculpture Society.
In 2018, along with two other artists, I received an award for the project that best engaged with the public. This was for an installation funded by and sited in National Taiwan University, a work that part-curated by students from the University.
In 2009 I was a joint recipient of an Arts Council Production Award for an installation and series of workshops in Bristol. In 2007 I was awarded a British Council Grant to produce a site-specific installation in Tokyo, Japan. In 2005 I was awarded an Arts Council Production Award for research and a video installation in Derby Museum. In 1994 my final MA installation won an award for outstanding achievement. In 1991 I was given the Margaret Wethered Award from North West Arts to travel to Berlin and produce work about the city.
In the distant past (from 1986 – 1993) I was a member of the artist-led Arena Studios in Liverpool, and organised exhibitions in the studios and in disused spaces. I now use the knowledge gained to lead the discovery of sites and organisation of site-specific exhibitions, installations, and live-art events in Taipei by cohorts of international students and recent graduates.
In 1996 I was commissioned by the Ikon Gallery to produce a mobile artwork to tour non-gallery venues in the West Midlands.
In 2000 I was commissioned by Angel Row Gallery to make a small box sculpture for the Museum of Installation.
In 2005 I was commissioned to make a large mobile cabinet/artwork by Public Arts Staffordshire.
Along with two other international artists I was commissioned by National Taiwan University in 2014 to create a site-specific installation with the involvement of the students and staff of the University. The work was exhibited from 2015 until 2024.
2017 I was commissioned by National Taiwan University of the Arts to create an installation for the exhibition Moving Anchor
In 2018 I was commissioned by the Formosa Sculpture Biennial to produce a large site-specific installation (Space Station)
In 2018 I was commissioned by Taipei Fine Art Museum to make Ghost Library as part of a group show.
Again in 2018 I was commissioned to make Embassy by the Keelung Harbour Biennial.
In 2022 I was commissioned by Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei to create an installation for the Studio Exhibition Space.
A small work, Ship of Fools, (1986?), is in the collection of The University of Liverpool.
The Archive of Lost Knowledge (2001) was reviewed in The Guardian Guide. Recent works, specifically Space Station, has been reviewed in Chinese Language publications, and online.
No…though I’m always open to offers….
In 2011 I was an artist in residence at Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan for two weeks, and in 2010 I was artist in residence at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, in Taipei National University of the Arts again in Taiwan. Both residencies involved the production of works with photography and video that used mirrors and lenses to question perceptions of the images, and thereby to interrogate my Western gaze.
In 1992 I was appointed as artist in residence at the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, where I worked in public on a large free-standing three panel painting depicting a shopping mall as a metaphor for the darker side of the after-life.
Address: 52 Camphill Road, Woolton, Liverpool, Merseyside, L25 7UQ, GB
Local Authority: Liverpool City Council (I am in the process of moving, so my electoral roll place is at present Bristol)
