Artist Statement

I am a Hull-based visual and participatory artist working collaboratively with people and place to help both human and more-than-human communities tell their stories about nature and the climate crisis.

My collaborative practice is deeply rooted in cultivating radical compassion, kindness and kinship between humans and the “more-than-human community”, a concept that emphasizes the importance of non-human beings in our ecological and social landscapes. I build upon old folk traditions, superstitions and land-based belief systems to weave and share stories that help us to understand and re-connect to our more-than-human kin.

My role as an artist is to respond compassionately to place and people, share skills, reflect experience, translate meaning and ultimately amplify voices from within our expanded community. I believe that transformational change will happen when enough people reframe their relationship, and reject the existing power dynamic we have towards the Earth.

I take an interdisciplinary and emergent approach to making that blends art, ecology, stories and social activism. I typically work across participatory practice, workshops and events, temporary sculpture and land-based installation, experimental drawing and ceremonious meaning-making and intimate ritual/song-based performance to help drive equitable and meaningful climate action and place-based stewardship.

I often work in co-creation with people to share the skills, ideas and altered perspectives that help develop kindness towards the natural world, and with more-than-human communities to help advocate for their agency and rights within the (often human-led) climate conversations. I work to a firm ethical protocol and use natural, biodegradable and/or sustainable site-specific materials in the production of work.

I practice through the lenses of class, feminism, disability and wider themes of climate hope, resilience and solidarity. Yet I am influenced by a wide range of environmental research and eco-sociological practice, including Traditional Ecological Knowledge, environmental philosophies and ethics, Permaculture practice, conservation science, foraging and growing, nature-based folklore, ceremony and rituals explored within my own Anglo-Irish ancestry, climate activism and my own direct experience of ‘listening’ to the Earth.

Artist Statement

I’m an artist who uses lots of different materials and processes, such as drawing, sculpture, print, installation, putting on events and creating rituals and song-based performance. But everything I make and do is about getting people to care more about the Earth and climate issues, and trying to make change happen that is fair to both people and planet.

I honestly believe that things will change when enough people change how they think about their relationships to the Earth. For example, our society acts like animals, plants, landscapes etc are only valuable if they serve our purpose, and we as a species exploit everything else with such brutality and disdain. But I want to challenge that and help people to understand that community doesn’t end with other humans – our community includes literally every animal, plant, landscape and natural phenomena too. I believe that developing meaningful relationships with ‘more-than-(just-)-humans’ will help us as a species develop the care, respect and kindness that those different to us deserve, and change the world for the better for all of us.

It’s this sort of radical perspective that I’m trying to promote within my art and research.

My research is all about how to best develop this ‘kinship’ within people’s hearts, so I often make work collaboratively with other humans to try and share kinship-developing skills and perspectives. I’m also researching into how to best give those in the more-than-human community a creative platform so their agency, needs and voice can be best heard in (human-led) climate conversations (as well as highlight points of commonality that can help humans to find connection with them easier) – so a lot of my work is in ethical creative collaboration with other species and ‘Beings’ too.

I’m also very interested in understanding how to make art that has a direct positive ecological impact on the environment too – if I’m gonna make something, it might as well be a practical tool for good too!

I create work and experiences that are influenced by my own experiences of being a disabled, working class woman… who gets depressed and immobilized by hearing how environmentally doomed we are. These experiences influence how I make and think about work, but I am influenced by a wide range of things: environmental philosophies and ethics, Permaculture practice, conservation science, climate activism, foraging and growing, ritual and ceremony, ecological folk practices and knowledge-systems/storytelling from my British and Irish heritage and my own experiences of connecting to and listening to the Earth.