My work is deeply rooted in the rural landscape and the sea shore, it addresses themes of  reparation and communication between species in the context of environmental threat.  My current focus is the strandline at The Wash in Norfolk. I have been exploring deposition both in the legal sense of witness, and in the geographical sense of laying down sediment, sediment appears in my installations ‘as it falls’.  Storms wash up hundreds of starfish, sea urchins and piles of lemony horn wrack and destroy dune habitats. Both the composition of the debris and the changing position of the strandline provide ‘material witness’ or ‘bioindicators’ of storms and temperature rise caused by climate breakdown. My practice is both witnessing change in The Wash and creating a platform for The Wash to ‘represent itself’. 

My research into the marine biology has motivated me to learn from the sea, and this translates into immersive installations full of imagined characters dancing, spawning, advising. Through audio you can hear the sea and chorus of sea urchins recorded at dusk. I activate my work through performance and poetry for example, Strandline Deposition and take my practice outside into public spaces, parks and the beach, to reach more diverse audiences, triggering curiosity, interest and interaction. My textile sculptures are printed with enlarged microscopic images of sea life .  I use speculation to interpret The Wash through a fictional lens. I use latex and porcelain, reflecting limestone from crushed shells and the myriad of glues made by molluscs and combine soft squishy tentacles printed with sea urchin tests, with sharp metal points – referencing sea iron.  Sculptures filled with sand, weighty and cold tentacles creep across the floor. 

Mask, Hood and Helmet (2023) are wearable sculptures shown at Groundwork Gallery and as a beach encounter Holme (2024), challenge human control and taxonomy which names other species as invasive and a biohazard, naming that paves the way for their destruction.  My partnership with Wild Ken Hill re-wilding initiative –  Edgelands (2022) created a sculpture trail that showed how culture can be a tool to recalibrate our relationship with ecology. Earth Maintenance (2024) in the park and canal side at Kings Cross, engaged children and adults in conversations about water management. 

I consider sustainability and end-of-life in my practice, I only use recycled materials in stuffing and construction and have a circular creative approach to design with re-use in mind. I use foraged willow as the frame for large-scale sculpture, an eco-design that is extremely light weight. By collaborating with farmers and ecologists in public spaces, I leverage the agency of creativity to repair my locality, using a living systems approach for example by encouraging community monitoring of the strandline for ocean health. This part of my practice is political, it demands speaking out to contest interventions that damage ecosystems. My years spent working in INGOs and UN agencies on international disaster prevention, frame my work as a rights-based practice. I see my art as reparative, hopeful and generative and hope this resonates with my audiences.