Applications for 2025

Every year I worry about getting my work out there and yet I always get shows. I cant predict when I will get something bigger and better, but Im hoping it will happen soon. Im going to leave this here. Its a piece of text from an application for East Side Projects. A show I hope to get, but Im aware its competitive. I like the ideas I write about here, so if I dont get it, I may use it for another application.

The Soft and Hard Debate

I am compelled to rescue discarded wood and furniture and reimagine it into something new, providing it new life as sculpture. This process is about identity, thresholds and change. Creating a monumental, yet unmonumental display.

This parallels myself, my history and identity, as a queer, working class, neurodivergent woman. 

The main piece within the gallery will be an ambitious build created from reclaimed wood and furniture, reminiscent of something domestic, much like my other works but much larger. Resting upon it ceramics that are ornament like and visceral, scattered generously. The contrast between the hard wood and delicate ceramics offers a sense opposing forces that come together in compositional harmony.

The ceramics I create are a fragile depiction of emotion, offering a sense of being exposed whilst having a hidden interior.

Around the gallery I would have rag rugs on the walls. These rugs are made from my family’s old clothes and some other discarded fabrics, depicting portraits of my family and other symbols of working classness, queerness and femininity. I have been making rag rugs for a few years now and it would be a good opportunity to create a series linked to the aesthetic of an exhibition. Rag rugs have a working-class history, families used potato sacks and old clothes to make them. My parents recall this from their own childhoods.

Alongside these ambitious sculptural works, I would have a video. My video editing is experimental, I approach it as I do my sculptures, like constructed assemblages. It would have a good sense of rhythm and repetition, showing various images along the theme of change, thresholds and identity. This would include images of my aging family members, symbols of being working class and my obsession with building sites and renovation where things are being broken down to be rebuilt. The sense of material change would run through everything in the exhibition and the video would link this together.

The title ‘The Soft and Hard Debate’ is about the contrasting materials I use as well as the contradiction of soft and hardness often found in working class people. It is also a comment on the nature of identity, which can sometimes seem solid and clear, however can alter and change, becoming something soft, fragile and ephemeral.

This opportunity would allow for the actualisation of sculptural assemblages beyond my usual capacity, as well as the ability to play with how they sit in the space together, with a continued narrative and theme.

The support from East Side Projects and the funding would go towards transport of large items, tools, screws and clay. Most of my materials are recycled, apart from the clay which is low fired using non-toxic glazes. It would be great to work alongside the curatorial team to develop the ideas and shape of how it would sit within the gallery. Thinking together about the conversations and compositions it creates as the viewer walks around it.