Wet and wild

Somehow it is April and I’ve been busy working on 3 shows. This year I’ve been up and down to Sheffield a couple of times (thank you Fronteer gallery for including my kale lumen in Tiny Plants - it’s now off to Photofusion), the Dulwich Heritage Cheese Gallery have been wonderful (and I’m taking part in a ‘meet the artist’ afternoon coming up soon), I’ve walked through wild winds and mud with small people for miles (hurray for their energy and love of the outdoors), and I’ve enjoyed exquisite exhibitions. My creative journal is slowly filling up and I’m well stocked in expired photographic paper. The solstice solargraph was a dissapointment but you can’t win them all.

Kings Cross

Polaroid, Saul Leiter show

Solstice Solargraph

Tidesdale, early morning

Green house

Cold morning

Brixton

Lumen

Kale Lumen

Mum and bay leaves

SLG meeting

Windows and Thresholds

Bell House will be hosting a new exhibition during the Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House. Over 40 artists - painters, printmakers, sculptors, filmmakers and photographers - explore the theme of Windows and Thresholds in a series of five exhibitions in Bell House. With a nod to the new Berthe Morisot show at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Windows and Thresholds considers whether these are barriers symbolic of separation and division or portals of opportunity. Looking inwards and outwards a group of female curators each take a room and invite us to cross over into their worlds.

I am so happy to be involved in one of the Bell House rooms, curated by Ky Lewis

Ways of Seeing Green

Grateful thanks to the wonderful Ky Lewis for hosting me in her gorgeous room in Bell House during Dulwich Open House. The entire show is glorious.

I am woman...

My next exhibition is the South London Women Artist show ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ in Peckham from 3rd to 6th of March. The show coincides with International Women’s Day and will take place at AMP gallery. The preview is 3rd March between 6pm-9pm.

#lofipostershow

2 December ‘21 at Studio 71, Brixton London.
Presenting the brilliant in the unusual. Fast moving photographic art shows in London.

Come and view all of the work for #lofipostershow in one airy space.

My contribution is one big lofi grainy, light leaked mess.

2018 photography review

I’ve come to look forward to my annual year in review. I’m not much of a blogger but the odd scraps I write up here are getting a bit better. My website has had a little face-lift too with the addition of a ‘places’ section and a general tidy up.

Last year I wrote that I’d be scaling things back in 2018 which is funny now that I think about it. I’ve packed in more this year than I ever have before. I knew I had to focus on other things, but the universe didn’t really agree with those plans.

Some of the things I’ve been up to, in no particular order…

I exhibited six times. Four times with Shutter Hub (The Shutter Hub Open at 5&33 in Amsterdam and Truman Brewey in London, Because We Can at Festival Pil’ours in France and Girl Town Tel Aviv, at Alfred Gallery in Tel Aviv), a co-headline exhibition called Dino Island and The Lake with Nik Strangelove and at the British Museum Staff Art Show. I was also featured at FIX Photo Festival at Menier Gallery
I moved house and couldn’t stop photographing it
The super hard-working power house Karen Harvey of Shutter Hub asked me to curate an exhibition called Out of the Ordinary which is on until the end of January
I was 2nd in the judges vote for Women of the Year at FIX Photo Festival
I went to Italy to do a little photography work, and onto Zurich after that to photograph a party
Lomography gave me a Diana 120 to test
I pitched an idea to a magazine, they said yes, and it’ll be published in February 2019.
I’ve just finished working on something with Stylus Boy
I was fortunate to be on the long list of nomations for the Hundred Heroines

One of the non-photography projects I’ve worked on this year has been a pre-requisite for getting to the next stage of something really huge. I’ve gone back chronologically and written, in great detail, about every significant moment in my life and how it made me feel. Doing this kind of work would feel really self-indulgent if not for the fact that someone, in a very professional capacity, needed me to do it. This coincided with winning a place on a cross-boundary leadership programme. If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I can assure you that I didn’t think it would be mine either. Both of these non-photography related things have been really magical in ways that I hadn’t expected. 2017 closed a few doors for me, but this year they swung back open again.

There are a couple of things in my notebook for 2019. Let’s see what happens.

These photographs are some of my favourites taken with Olympus Pen EE2, Canon AE-1 and Diana 120. Go here for 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.

Green House, Kew

Snow day, Bloomsbury

Rusty Laptop, Crystal Palace

Women, Bloomsbury

Home

Kathryn, Barbican

Somewhere in south London

Bus window, London

Birds, Glasgow

Plastic, York

Cricket ground, Grantham

Favourite rose

Chelsea Physic Garden

R

Green House, Kew

Birthday, London

Pops, Nottingham

No 3, Brixton

Olympus Pen, London

Pear drop

South London Botanical Institute

Leo, Grantham

Crystal Palace lake

Ferns, Arran

Three Exhibitions

Shutter Hub Open, part of Photomonth East London
It’s difficult to put into words how brilliant the Shutter Hub Open was to work on. 220 images from 150 photographers from all over the world - that’s many hours of organising, publicising, and hanging work - at the Truman Brewery off Brick Lane in London. It was also wonderful to meet so many great photographers and listen to the stories behind the photographs. My image was of Emma Watson on the London tube as she was #waitingforthecall. An exhausting but incredible week.

Out of the Ordinary, Bridewell Theatre
It was straight from Truman Brewery to Bridewell Theatre in the blink of an eye. Karen at Shutter Hub asked me to curate a Shutter Hub show, from concept to selection. I was grateful and thrilled to be asked. The selection process wasn’t easy, with photographers Christopher Bird, Phillipa Bloom, Matt Dever, Mieke Douglas, Anna Harrison, Pippa Healy, Simon Isaac, Ray Knox, Janet Lees, Anneleen Lindsay, Ioana Marinca, Lisa Mitchell, Natalie Paetzold, Clare Park, Ann Petruckevitch, Tina Reid, Barry Reid, Jo Stapleton, Marianne van Loo, Stephen Williams making the cut. The installation of the show went smoothly with a busy (Monday!) opening that evening.

Staff Art Show, British Museum
My next show is in gallery 5 of the British Museum. I cannot wait to see the selection and installation. Pictures to follow.

A Tuscan adventure

Recently I was on a train bound for a northern city in Italy . People were boarding like they were on a Ryan Air flight, desperate to cram their suitcases into whatever space they could. They stood in the aisles and muttered to one another in tense and tired tones. At one stage the train stopped inside a long, dark tunnel and the lights went out. Heat began to rise and I forced myself to take deeper, slower breathes. The train would start moving again and the lights would come on soon, surely.

By this point I’d been in Italy for 6 days. It may have been September but the heat was still pounding the low 30s and I’d been bitten by mosquitos almost 50 times. On day 3 I had started to sleep more soundly than I had for a while. It was probably all the cycling I’d been doing through Tuscany. It was as idylic as it sounds and worth every mosquito bite.

I’d been out of sorts for a few weeks. Books, music, gardening and walking were not really helping. During the tense, dark moment on the train I had just about enough time to have a stern word with myself. What was wrong with me? <edit a month later: I figured out what was wrong but that’s a whole other adventure>.

A year ago I decided I really wanted to go to Norway but for some reason found myself in Italy. This, of course, was no hardship. I casually discussed Italy with an Italian colleague and then found myself going to her neck of the Tuscan woods, doing photography work at an Air B&B in Torre del Lago. A later blog post on that will follow.

I don’t normally travel with my heavier camera gear but this gave me a good reason. I had a job to do. I could take as many pictures as I wanted of the apartment, Torre del Lago and the places I visited from that base including Lucca and Florence. I also traveled up to Como via Milan and then onto Zurich to celebrate another landmark birthday (and to photograph that too). This was a lot of travel so I packed lightly and made sure I could cycle with my camera gear.

All was well until I lost my Olympus Pen EE-2, gifted only two weeks before on my birthday. Foolishly it had dangled from my handlebar. Foolishly I had only shot one roll through it. I was so angry with myself and didn’t talk for hours.

I took around 850 photographs on my trip. I was surprised to take so many. There are around a roll of film’s worth of photographs I’d like to keep, but the rest don’t really do very much for me. I found myself pining for film the entire time, wishing I’d packed differently and mourning the loss of my Olympus Pen EE-2 hard.

When I finally came back from my trip (with the mandatory flu caught on the plane home, which I still have 2 weeks later), I found myself back in waiting rooms with surgeons deciding what they’re going to do to me. There will be a bit more of that going on it seems. I am not fed up, nor do I have post-holiday blues, but it’s been an interesting time of reflection. A lot of clearing out.

There’s a lot of good stuff though. More writing, books through the post (thank you Hannah!), trees through the post (I love you CB), a friend on my doorstep with a plant and in need of a cuppa. And a staggering evening watching Kathryn Joseph. We hugged, chatted a little, she made me blush and wrote me a love note. A perfectly timed tonic.

There is also the fact I am helping out and taking part with the Shutter Hub Open at Truman Brewery for East London International Photography Festival which is going to be brilliant. I’m exhibiting at the British Museum staff art show and I am curating something for Shutter Hub at Bridewell Theatre. I am ridiculously excited about that. More posts about this soon.

Dino Island and The Lake

I blogged a little bit last year about how I found myself gravitating towards water, and in particular Crystal Palace lake which is a local London Victorian charm. The lake and the spaces around it served as an antidote to the noise and bustle of central London. I'm now showing some of these pictures alongside Nik Strangelove from February 23rd at The Douglas Fir in London.

Entitled Dino Island (Nik's bit) and The Lake (my bit), my photographs are from two separate series which explore the healing properties of water and the positive impact of nature during periods of personal metamorphosis. I met Nik through making these photographs. It was that classic tale of discovering someone on Instagram who is also interested in local landmarks.

Nik's work is a collection of photographs of the dinosaurs that live in Crystal Palace Park, that were created in 1854 as part of the Crystal Palace Exhibition. These prehistoric park dwelling friends are in danger of crumbling into extinction all over again. Working in partnership with the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs Nik gained exclusive access to Dino Island to photograph the dinosaurs, in a bid to help with fundraising efforts for their conservation.

Come and join us this Friday. It's up for 6 weeks!

2017 photography review

Like a lot of people, I love the turning of a year. I love the newness of January and how it feels like shedding a skin. 2017 on the whole has been pretty amazing, though December has been a beast. As we edge closer to January I thank my lucky stars that everyone I love is still alive.

I set out to push myself in 2017 to do things I hadn't done before. I gave a couple of talks which were well received. I played a small role in an appeal for homeless photographers. I wrote articles - something that doesn't come easily to me. I even blogged more which is a small miracle. I only exhibited once and that was at The Paxton Centre, but my work was published in Oh Comely and presented at the ICA thanks to Emma Watson.

I need to scale back a bit next year but I've just come back from a short meeting to discuss a small possible exhibition on my doorstep with a local photographer. Effra FC also turns 10, so something had better mark that occasion.

Here are some of my favourites from the year shot on 35mm and digital. Go here for 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.