In The Frame: Nurture. Rebel.

I recently spent a day in the studio with photographer Dave Rowswell, making a new set of images around Nurture. Rebel. - two sides of my creative practice that I’ve been writing and thinking about a lot lately as part of my practice-led research.

The shoot grew out of questions I’ve been exploring through Colossal and my research for Arts University Plymouth: what it means to make work that invites people in, while still holding onto your own space as an artist.

Nurture is the part of me that welcomes, facilitates, shares and makes space for other people.

Rebel pushes back. She plays, disrupts, refuses, takes up space and doesn’t always need to be useful.

Rather than trying to resolve those two positions, I’m becoming more interested in what happens when they sit alongside each other - or rub up against one another.

Dave and I used Colossal, my body, the tools of screen printing and fragments of language almost as props. Sometimes the images feel direct and open; elsewhere they become more awkward and obscured.

It was strange and useful to put myself physically into the work in this way. I’m normally behind Colossal, making things happen for other people. This time, I was very deliberately in the frame.