In June 2010 the Lea Valley Waterworks Centre invited artists to participate in its first ever exhibition. Entitled "Oh I Do Like to Be Beside The Lea", the exhibition explored the Lea Valley's fascinating combination of urban and rural space. The Lea Valley is a marshy nature reserve adjacent to part of the old East London canal network, and it’s a part of London where the City and its natural and industrial history coexist. From certain parts of the Valley you can also see London's contemporary financial centre of Canary Wharf. It is this aspect of the area that I chose for my installation.
BAGGAGE CLAIM
As part of the 2009 E17 Art Trail which ran from September 5th - 14th, I did a second site-specific installation for the Vestry House Museum Garden in Walthamstow. 'Baggage Claim' was an installation of suitcases scattered around the garden with each one open for audiences to sift through. This installation was a way of processing my return to the UK after an absence of two years. It was a transitional phase in which I revisited the particularities of my own past and culture while still having a strong connection to a globalised itinerant culture reflected in the wider E17 population.The process of unpacking (from storage) what was essentially my former life, combined with more recent acquisitions and observations provided each suitcase with very different content.
(Please click on images to enlarge)
LAND CHANGE, ART AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The 'Towers of Trash' (right) were first shown as part of the Creek Art Fair in Dubai in March 2008. They were then exhibited again as part of Land Change, Art and the Environment' at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi in October 2008. This exhibition also featured two 'recycled' paintings originally included in Artificial Landscapes in 2006 (below).
RECYCLED LANDSCAPES
ARTIFICIAL LANDSCAPES
Artificial Landscapes was my first site-specific installation in the Vestry House Museum Garden and was part of the E17 Art Trail in 2006.
Fifteen 'landscapes' were placed around the garden for the 10 day duration of the Trail. The landscapes used a mixture of materials more commonly associated with industrial processes such as auto paint, commercial printing inks, acetate and bleach which set a tension between the bucolic ideal of the landscape and the corrosive impact of the materials used to compose it. Given the unpredictable nature of such materials over the long term, the work also questioned notions of longevity and value of works of art. This was compounded by the fact that the work remained outside in the garden for the 10 days of the trail. It was therefore subject to the same conditions as the natural landscape around it and the consequent weathering process became an integral part of each composition.
Several of these paintings were re-worked for an exhibition at the Courtyard Gallery in Dubai in November 2008 and shown as 'Recycled Landscapes'. They were also exhibited as part of 'Land Change, Art and the Environment' in Abu Dhabi (see below).
OTHER WORK
Both pictures below were included in "After Hiroshima: Nuclear Imaginaries" held at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, from July - September 2005. The exhibition then moved to the Millais Gallery at the Southampton Institute from January 13 - February 25, 2006.
