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. One of the great perils of Arctic whaling was getting trapped in the ice and either having the ship destroyed by being crushed by the ice, or being trapped in the ice and having to overwinter in the […]
This is one of the pieces in the Verdant Works Exhibition ‘The Arctic Whaling Year’, Autumn 2018. British Arctic Whaling started around the 1600s after sailors sailing up into the Arctic north of Norway for walrus discovered large numbers of whales in the bays around Spitsbergen. At the time it was thought that Spitsbergen was […]
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 […]
There are many places nearer to my home in Norfolk than Shetland that have material about Britain’s Arctic Whaling Heritage so why spend a month Shetland researching it? Well, I got to be artist in residence at Bressay Lighthouse for the whole month of July with a huge studio space to start to develop work […]
Scale Lane Bridge is a pedestrian bridge across the river Hull on the east side of the city. It can rotate on a single pivot a bit like a pinball flipper to enable boats to navigate up and down the river. It is unique because pedestrians can remain on it when it moves. It is […]
Last year, when I was just starting my artist in residency at Burton Constable, I was “in residence” for the weekend of the Cornucopia Festival. For three days whilst the sun shone and music played I sat in the barn with the sperm whale skeleton and talked to festival goers about my work. I had […]
So, I’ve completed the four pre-exhibition residency stints in the Stables at Burton Constable Hall as part of my Artist in Residence (AIR) funded by the Arts Council and the Friends of Burton Constable Hall. It seemed like a good time to reflect on how my first official (and funded) residency has gone. It’s been […]
I’m just back from my first stint at Burton Constable Hall as Artist in Residence. I have spent a wonderful four days in the barn with their iconic sperm whale skeleton mentioned in Moby Dick. As well as working on drawings of the skeleton and other items in the collection that have caught my eye […]
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. […]