A personal reflective practice journal with thoughts and insights into some of my work.
Archive Experiments
I’ve been struggling to be inspired recently. It happens. I decided to go back to some archive imagery and continue working on this idea of incorporating the hand drawn maps, places of significance, placed directly on to the body.
Imprints
I’ve been thinking lots about roots, belonging and place. With my family home now gone, in my head I thought it would be this huge relief. As if the house no longer existed, that my ties to places and sites of trauma would be erased. Of course they're not. My real life connection to the place has disappeared, but my emotional and historical connection, and the baggage that that comes with, is right there.
Behind the scenes of Mind Behind the Myth with Daniel Regan
I recently wrote a piece for Historic Royal Palaces about my involvement for their current exhibition George III: The Mind Behind The Myth. You can read the piece in full over on their website.
These lines are like journeys
These lines are like journeys, from one side of something to another, which is how it feels doing this commission. I’m journeying across quite difficult terrain, asking myself questions that will be posed to others in a building where so many people (patients & clinicians) pass through.
Tavistock NHS Commission
Recently I was commissioned by The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust to make a piece of artwork that explores my experience of mental health services as a non-white and queer artist. The commission will be displayed in their building in north London. The project and corresponding public engagement programme is also supported with additional funding from Arts Council England.
King George III: The Mind Behind The Myth
Recently I was commissioned by the National Gallery to produce a short audio visual presentation about my work at Kew Palace supporting men with lived experience of mental health difficulties
Creatively Minded & Ethnically Diverse
In early 2021 I was commissioned by the Baring Foundation to produce the introduction to their report on creativity & ethnic diversity.
A New Language
This personal essay was commissioned by The Lancet Psychiatry and published in their December 2020 issue.
The Lancet Psychiatry
In autumn 2019 I was approached by my gallery, Bethlem Gallery, to see if I was interested in a working collaboration with The Lancet Psychiatry. The relationship would be to provide imagery for 11 of the journal's covers throughout 2020. I was really excited from the start and slowly we developed a curatorial process of selecting the imagery.
The Power of Peer to Peer Support
What does it take for artists to show up, be themselves and share their works and challenges with confidence? How do we create that sense of safety and nurturing in a world that focuses so much on competition and success?