Artist Ayuko visiting my studio during her exploration of Spike Open Studios 2026
As I find myself firmly rooted in Autumn with only the memory of summer’s sun on my skin I reflect on how rapidly the seasons seem to change. So much has happened since my last post in April and I realise I have neglected this journal space.
My intention for this year has been to make my work more visible. In some ways I’ve achieved this. Through the performance of Catching Sight of My Reflection with Hannah Sullivan at Arnolfini in February. And through the quiet performance of The Artist is Visible at Spike Open Studios in May when I spent the weekend inviting conversation about women, ageing and visibility. Between then and now there has been a lull while I applied for Arts Council funding - twice - and was rejected - twice. But this week I’ve delivered a performance lecture, My Body Remembers, as part of Open Sandwich, Spike Island’s community lunchtime talks. Alongside this I’ve exhibited A Work in Progress in The Corridor, Spike’s artists’ space for testing work.
The Artist is Visible, Spike Open Studios 2026
I’ve spent the past few weeks pondering on what I’d like to share of my current work with fellow artists, how I might offer an insight into my process and create space for others to think about their own. How I might create a somatic experience for my audience where they leave with a greater awareness of their own body. In the planning I asked myself
‘What might be possible in this sharing that I haven’t yet allowed myself to imagine?’ and
‘What might happen if incisive questions became the structure for this talk?’
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of ‘Time to Think’ by Nancy Kline and want to nurture a thinking environment, both through the sharing and through the exhibition.
I’ve approached both the Open Studios and the Open Sandwich sharing as live research with a focus on depth, intimacy, trust and simplicity. Any process of reflecting and sharing in this way involves selecting. In her powerful book ‘In the Dream House’ Carmen Maria Machado writes:
“What is placed in or left out of the archive is a political act, dictated by the archivist and the political context within which she lives… The complete archive is mythological, possible only in theory.”
I’ve found the process of curating this work and my creative influences really valuable. I’ve enjoyed including aspects of my process that don’t necessarily become the work but are invaluable in my thinking. In looking I’ve made links back to work I produced on my Art Foundation course in the early 1980s and realised how, when I allow myself the time and space, my focus always comes back to my body and its connection to my surroundings, relationships, age and cultural influences.
Trying to love my body I find myself slipping towards the grotesque
The other week I had the wonderful opportunity to take party in a Curator Bank session offered by Visual Arts South West. I was linked with Matt Burrows, curator at Exeter Phoenix, and was gifted a hugely valuable sixty minutes where I felt seen, my practice validated, and my thinking expanded. Through our conversation I became aware of how my play with photographic mediums are a form of imaging coding as I reference methods and approaches I’ve adopted over decades, many of which are now rarely used or have become obsolete. In A Work in Progress at Spike I’m playing with scale, attempting to disrupt the exhibition space, and immerse my audience in the work.
I’ve actually spent a huge amount of time outdoors in the past three months so adapting to presenting work indoors has itself been challenging. Back in August I spent a week in Wales on the annual Practising Places dance residency. This year we were exploring ‘Edges’, with a focus on ‘contemplative-bodied practices, offering spaces to meet and consider in movement what it means to be present to the current transitions of this living earth’. I spent one magic afternoon working with my friend and movement teacher Kirstie Simson dancing with a section of rock on the Pembrokeshire coastline. As Kirstie documented my movement I had no idea that a young boy was moving sympathetically with my body on the rocks above me.
All photos with thanks to Kirstie Simson
When I move outdoors I always write as a way of recording the experience. This is a short poem written on that day.
water in mouth
moving as tides
horizon tipping, falling, steadying.
hillside dancing in shifting light
grip, fit,
knee and wrist
and arm and foot
the folding of water on rock, on sand
of air on wing, on cheek, on eyelid
rock soft, rock calling,
stretching to wet its appetite in the advancing sea
Two weeks ago I was moving outdoors again in ancient woodland in Dorset. Helen Poynor, the internationally recognised movement teacher who specialises in movement in natural environments, offered the workshop, Autumn in the Woods. We were invited to offer our ‘attentive embodied presence, learning both to stay and how to move with change, following as new pathways reveal themselves.’ This was both deeply challenging because of the extreme weather on the first day, and deeply rewarding moving with huge, beautiful trees on the second day. On the first evening I wrote:
Wild, elemental, challenging, beautiful, consuming, fascinating. Wanting to leave, wanting to stay, to lay down, to connect. Heavy rain dropping on cheek, on mouth, on eye. Relentless. I am here. I am honouring. I am present in and with my struggle. My senses are pin sharp, my nerve endings alive to the elemental force that enfolds me. I am here in all this messiness, this abundance, this cry for attention. I am noticing everything.
