11am – 5pm
Tuesday to Saturday
Free Admission
Places, Spaces, Traces reflects on my Romani heritage. I am interested in the commonalities we have as people, the need for a place of our own, family and food. With migration, changes in our working lives and increasing opportunities to travel, our certainty about who we are and where we fit in is unsure.
Whilst living in a small house on the outskirts of Maidstone for much of my adult life I may, by any description, be perceived as a ‘settled’ member of my local community however my art practice and lifestyle choice contradicts this. I travel internationally in pursuit of my work and readily continue drawing, stitching and producing pieces on the move as I work and engage with others. I see what I do as being of the world and not as separate from it. Everything is collated and collected on my journey. My thinking and approaches to my work is constantly in motion and being challenged by the exchange with other people and places.
It is the transient nature of my work and process, a compulsion to engage with the things experienced as part of the overlooked details of daily life that are of interest. Yet, at the same time the stories I find about people and place, regardless of social, cultural and economic backgrounds inform who I am and my particular take on the world.
This work formed part of the exhibition Gypsy Maker4 hosted by the Romani Cultural and Arts Company.
The connection we have to landscape and place is at the heart of my work and the question ‘What would you value enough to bring with you if forced to leave your home, and what you would miss if you had to leave it behind?’ In recent times, these simple words have equal resonance as we find our lives restricted of movement due to the pandemic and not able to meet with friends or family to share a cuppa, eat a meal or pass the time.
This new work has led to an invitation for me to create an installation for exhibition at the beautiful Sint-Anna-ten-Drieën church in Antwerp in 2023 through the organisation vzw ANNA3. I have also been invited install some of the pieces in the amazing creative space of a converted light vessel LV21, in Gravesend in the UK as well as here at R Space.
All of my work uses reclaimed materials, cloth and paper and much of the media I use such as paint or dye is retrieved and salvaged from bins etc wherever I can find it. We have become careless in our care of this shared world.
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