Having managed to update my blog monthly since I started it I've slipped into the abyss of lapsed updates. My only excuse - too much going on, but that's not really true. It's more down to best intentions not quite being realised. Anyway, one huge thing that has happened is the completing and exhibiting of ...

We've now passed the middle of September but I'm still sorting through things that were buzzing around in my head during a long, very welcome summer break. I had lots of ambitious creative plans but ended up doing almost nothing, except making some maps of particular moments. So here are a couple...




... and a Wednesday moment.

After almost 6 weeks of idle bliss I've come back to a flurry of activity - but I'll write about that next week.

I have probably only managed to spend a couple of hours on my own practice in the last couple of months and as we hurtle towards summer I am getting increasingly frustrated.
One thing I have been doing is completing activities from Miranda July's book Learning To Love You More. Having photographed under my bed using flash photography before cleaning (yuk!) I have now made a gallery of the artwork in my Mum's house that I grew up with. This has been a fascinating process as it has made me realise how much art surrounded me as a child and how that art has influenced my own interests and life choices. Here's a couple of examples:

One of my favorite paintings by my grandfather, Henry Hoyland. He loved the circus and spent many years painting portraits of the performers, but particularly the clowns. I grew up with a fascination for the circus and it led me to leave London for Bristol to train as a trapeze artist, something I did for many years.
A Mexican angel. I remember there being a lot of Mexican art around the house as a child. A couple of years ago I unexpectedly inherited some money and decided what I really wanted to do was realise a long-standing ambition and travel around Mexico with my family, which we did. I now wonder how much this artwork influenced that desire.

I know it was over a month ago now but this is the first chance I've had to get back to my own work since Spike Open, including updating my blog. After much deliberation I ended up showing a piece that developed out of my shift in thinking around Heavy Words, the project about cervical cancer, and connects with the writing of poet Julia Darling whose work has influenced me.

The piece consists of a large photographic print of a window with the words 'we are all indelible, miraculous, here' written in dust on the window sill beneath. Some people liked it, some felt the text was unnecessary, one person thought it was a painting and others missed it altogether.
After last year's Open Studios I made a decision not to hide my own unfinished work in the shadow of a participatory piece, one that gave focus to the audience's musings on what they had left unfinished. I would think big and try and overcome my anxiety about showing my work. However, in hindsight I realise that scale isn't everything! In a shared studio space my work was still somehow hidden. I'll keep trying.

Something has shifted for me with Heavy Words in the last month. I've allowed myself to play much more with ideas and materials, and the project's taken on a new lease of life. Rather than confining my ideas to photography I've remembered that I can express myself in different media too, and have moved back into the realm of installation, using domestic objects, clothing, embroidery and photos. I've found myself creating a domestic environment in which to explore issues surrounding cervical cancer and suddenly the work has taken on a relevant form. Making a shift from the scientific to the personal has allowed me to feel in control in a way I haven't felt for a long time.

Something Susan Sontag writes in On Photography has helped lead me on this journey:
"Only that which narrates can make us understand."

Over the past few months I have been involved with a programme of events at Arnolfini called 'Rethinking Archives'. These have explored issues and questions relating particularly to the archiving of contemporary art and live art. The events have included presentations by artists and academics and at the last session an inspiring presentation was given by artist Daniel Belasco Rogers. For the past 5 years Daniel has been using GPS systems to track and archive his daily activities. The resulting work is called The Drawing of My Life (see Daniel's website to find out more).
Two days earlier I had decided to focus my daily practice on map making - an interesting bit of syncronicity - and spent the rest of that week playing with ways of making maps related to my own practice and my daily life. Here are some of the results...

I spent some time last week at Southmead Hospital's Cytopathology Department photographing the journey of the smear sample so I could get as rounded picture as possible of the paths and people involved in diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer. It was a fascinating couple of hours and I now have lots of new questions to ask and further ideas for photographs I would like to take. One thing that fascinated me was that slides are kept for 10 years before being destroyed. There are tens of thousands of them and they are so heavy they can only be housed on the ground floor otherwise they would come through the ceiling because of the sheer weight of them.
The screeners spend 4 - 5 hours each day looking at samples. They might screen 9 samples in an hour, depending on the complexity of the sample. I expected to find them working in a lab-type setting, but it was like walking in to an open plan office with individual booths, each with their own personal collections of photographs and momentoes - a very human experience.
       

I don't make resolutions, but earlier this month I did do a review of 2008 looking at my achievements over the year. I then spent time thinking about my hopes for the year ahead. Despite taking on a small studio space at Spike Island last January I feel (yet again!) that I have achieved very little in my own creative practice and that the emphasis has been on my work in education. But with less paid work and more time ahead of me I plan for 2009 to be the year when this balance shifts and some of my work in progress gets completed.

I have started daily practice again after a lull over Christmas. My focus for the last week has been 'The epic in the everyday'. Here are the photos:
     

During December I travelled over to Belfast, taking photographs and producing an evaluation report for Wonderland an arts and science collaboration devised by Professor Helen Storey and Professor Tony Ryan that explores real solutions for a more sustainable world.

The exhibition has travelled from London to Sheffield to Belfast and I have been lucky enough to travel with it, following both the exhibition and it’s education programme. In London I saw teachers and young people have the space to think together, with teachers really seeing the value of their students’ ideas. In Sheffield I watched children’s eyes light up as they experienced the magic of the dissolving polymer, and secondary students’ sudden realisation that science can be art and art can be science. In Belfast I saw individuals blossoming in an environment where they were given the space and support to develop as creative individuals.

It was also a fantastic opportunity to combine my love of photography with my ability to evaluate creative educational projects, an area I’d really like to develop more in the future.   

I have got out of sync with my blog lately having been doing a whole number of other things over the past month. These include:
1. finishing off the StyaB creative mentoring programme (see the StyaB blog and my Education pages for more information) with animation workshops held at Spike Island
2. working with the NGDs on a commission for Arnolfini as part of their current Supertoys exhibition
3. updating my website (see Education and New Work pages)
4. collating a collection of early childhood memories with Luci Gorell Barnes into a small book, A Collection of Recollections
5. spending time with my kids at the Supertoys show creating mutant toys, which gave them both great pleasure and filled a Sunday afternoon (see below)

I am now back in my studio creating new images for the A - Z of Motherhood and transcribing interviews for Heavy Words. More soon.

Last night's NGD launch was a great success with over 30 people attending and a real mix of family, friends, artists and arts organisations. There were lots of conversations about potential commissions and it really did feel that we were marking a shift into a new phase. We now have a number of exciting new collaborations happening over the next 6 months, offering new opportunities and challenges to the NGDs and generating income for the organisation.

I have been pre-occupied recently with getting things organised for the launch of the new NGDs (New Generation Documentors) company. You can read more about this on the Education pages of my site but, in a nutshell, it's a fresh, innovative new company bringing bright ideas to young people’s minds.

Some years ago I found myself looking through a microscope in a cytology department at Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton as part of my research on Hidden Images: the secret world of genetic disorders. There in front of me was a beautiful image of something I didn't understand. I was looking at a cervical cancer cell. That moment stayed with me and the initial idea for Heavy Words grew - to create a work that would raise awareness of cervical cancer and enable women to talk openly about their experiences of the disease.
In the beginning I imagined Heavy Words as a 1:1 performance piece that would take place in doctors' consulting rooms. Due to lack of funding and the passing of time my thinking has shifted to a small installation/exhibition to be shown in a GPs surgery.
The project has been moving slowly, but earlier this month I placed a piece on the Jo's Trust website asking women in the South West if they would meet me and share their stories of cervical cancer. I'm having my first meeting at the end of this week. This development has coincided with publicity for the new HPV vaccine. I'm excited again and feel the work is about to move up a gear.

    
Sketchbook example 1                                                Sketchbook example 2

Over the past week I've continued to photograph things that catch my attention. As with the previous week this is generally small detail that might normally be missed.

      
   

Something I've been doing off and on for a while now, on my own and with fellow artist Luci Gorell Barnes, is daily practice. This usually involves photography but might also include writing or drawing. It's a way of ensuring that every day, despite what else might be going on, some space is made for creative thought.
At the moment I'm using my new pocket digital camera to record 'What I noticed'. Below are the results from the first week.

       
          

I've spent 4 weeks over the summer camping in Cornwall (a fantastic break, but challenging at times with water-logged fields and gale force winds) so I'm slowly getting back in to work mode.
 
Our tent on Bodmin Moor!

Over the next few weeks I will be posting up a new project 'No.4' in the New work section that consists of a series of images touching on past and present, childhood memories and sense of place.

Welcome to my blog. I will be posting details of what I'm up to, my latest projects and other useful information here over the coming weeks. In the meantime you can find out more about my work on my web site.