This work was made for the 2022 exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife. Whaling in the unpredictable weather of the Arctic could be dangerous. Storms would drive ice against and underneath whale ships. If the hull of a ship was damaged one way to repair […]
I belong to the Artist’s Programme run by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich. The group, run by the wonderful education department, encourages artists through a programme of workshops and regular meetings to consider issues around a range of practice related topics. Although I love the built environment of the displays there are […]
I’m just back from an amazing trip to Dundee for the installation and opening of my exhibition ‘The Arctic Whaling Year’ at the Verdant Works. The exhibition has been over a year in the making, but much, much longer in gestation. As I have been researching British Arctic Whaling I have pondered the idea of […]
This is one of the pieces in the Verdant Works Exhibition ‘The Arctic Whaling Year’, Autumn 2018. Whalers were as superstitious as any other sailors and had many rituals which they observed. They also amended rituals for the circumstances they found themselves in. A good example of this is the crossing the line ceremony. This […]
My artist statement currently states that “I make work inspired by Moby Dick and British Arctic Whaling, inspired by my travel and research. I am aware that this is quite a niche practice, but I carry on regardless, and for once this approach has paid off! The White Hart in Downham Market, Norfolk has been […]
In recent years I have been fortunate to see and photograph some of the old Arctic whaler log books held in Hull History Centre and Hull Maritime Museum. I have then used my photos to transcribe the entries. I’ve been fascinated as the individual voyages unfold, reading of the frustrations of the captain not catching whales when other ships […]
This is a small piece inspired by a particular aspect of arctic whaling that has interested me for a while now. British Arctic Whalers had various superstitions and traditions and the ones that interest me at the moment are those that relate to their material culture – special things that they made. In December I […]
I’ve used some related imagery I’ve been working on for a while to loosely illustrate this traditional song about a whaling voyage in book form. I used a combination of digital printing on fabric and fabric paint for the lyric pages. The images were made using transfer dyes, layering burnt sheer fabrics and freehand machine embroidery. […]
Transfer dye on textile. 2015. Work in progress. Image inspired by various images of the Hull whaler Diana trapped in the Arctic ice in 1866.
Layered organza iceberg with digital print of Whale ship Eclipse from Dundee. 2014