Artist & Video Maker based in Liverpool
Excited to say that I’ve won first place in the LCR Photo Awards 2023. I submitted 5 photographs around the theme of coastal communities and the climate crisis and 3 of them have been chosen for exhibition which opens tomorrow and runs until 23rd April. There were 1900 entries, so I’m pretty chuffed to have won the analogue category.
More information ban be found on the Open Eye’s website here.CR23
For the past six months I’ve been running a regular monthly beginners photography course over in Runcorn. It’s an older group, originally formed to support men who were suffering with anxiety, over time the group has expended to anyone with an interest in photography.
I structured each session around a particular technique beginning with exposure with month one followed by composition, flash, basic editing and last week, simple Cyanotype prints.
It’s been great to watch the group develop – we split each session into a mixture of theory and practical experiments which seemed to suit everyone’s different needs. Some members of the group are a bit more advanced in some areas, and we happy to support others with less experience.
The Cyanipe session was fun – we’re going to continue this next month and then plan in some basic editing sessions. I’m expecting great things from this group in the future so watch out.
For the last 5 years I have been working with Artists Robin Whitmore and Mark Whitelaw on Duckie’s The Slaughterhouse Club.
The Slaughterhouse Club was a participatory arts project with homeless vulnerable Londoners struggling with booze and addiction issues. The project ran for forty weeks per year until 2020.
The participants – about 45 hostel residents regularly working throughout the year – were treated as artists and encouraged to make creative work. Together they make songs, poems, stories, short plays, animations, puppet shows, slide shows, paintings, films and videos. The Slaughterhouse Club engaged residents of the hostels to connect with themselves and their community through the creation of these arts activities – to aid harm minimisation and personal growth.
The work was very delicate and the hostel environment is very unpredictable. Our participants lead chaotic lives, and struggle with entrenched alcohol and drug addictions, fragile mental health and often run-ins with the authorities. Most of the work was one-to-one, drawing out creativity through personal conversations and developing inventive exercises. The Slaughterhouse Club was produced by Duckie in association with Thames Reach Hostels and funded by the Big Lottery Fund and Vauxhall One.
Over the last couple years I have been getting back in analogue photography. I’d forgotten how much the limitation on the number of shots and the development process itself really makes you think about the image you are taking before taking the photograph itself. I’ve also found the camera itself (I’ve been using a Widelux) promotes a dialogue with the general public – one that wouldn’t happen say if I was just using my phone.
I also think that film itself has a certain delicate softer feel than this often harsher 4K world. I suppose I could achieve a similar feel with a certain amount of digital processing, but I like the element of surprise and potential for unexpected flaws that can add to the feel of an image. Similar to the way in which a record can pick up flaws and scratches that become unique to the listening experience.
I’ve been experimenting with different types of printing, mostly Cyanotype as it has proved to be the most practical at homeland I love the scratches and defects that can added (intentionally or not) to the process. I also love the way you can print on all sorts of found materials and objects which can create a whole new meaning to the work. I’m interested in exploring these ideas further, hopefully on a larger scale.
Worrying times in London at the moment, and to me, it feels like it’s been coming for a while. Living in Liverpool, but often working in London, and having previously lived in London for 15 years, it’s sad to see it become other worldly. Looking back London was a place of excitement, somewhere where you went that was accessible, diverse and full of life. Now it just feels corporate and unobtainable.
An offshoot of this is a project I was working on with Re-Dock last year, Happy Birthday RVT, celebrating 150 years of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. The RVT is the UK’s oldest LGBTQ pub and iconic performance space, Towards the end of the project, the venue was sold to Immovate, a re-development company with a history of turning turning places into luxury flats and hotels.
The result is the launch of a campaign to look out for the Future of the RVT. You can sign up at RVT.community The campaign officially launches tomorrow at the Cinema Museum in Elephant and Castle with a screening of the film that came out of the Happy Birthday RVT project, now called Save The Tavern. Here’s the trailer. With some many cultural spaces closing down and people being forced to move due to high rents, it feels like it’s time to make a stand.