About
I am an artist, living and working in West Wales, where I currently engage in both solo and collaborative practices, working from my studio, directly in the (Cambrian) mountains, and in the theatre. In the studio I am currently developing an ongoing meditative and labour-intensive series of durational drawings and sculptures, which are the accumulation of hundreds of thousands of data points derived from scientific studies on natural phenomena such as soil, seeds, peat bogs, and glaciers. On stage, I devise, direct and collaborate with musicians, composers, and dancers to create live, generative, experimental improvisations in response to the scientific datasets, and in the mountains – a recent work featured an embodied durational performance where I lay in a self-dug ditch for 24 hours, reciting the data emitted from a surrounding soil sensor network to global audiences via livestream video.
My deeply immersive and posthumanist practice merges art and science in a way that is both performative and meditative. My durational approach, particularly the many hours that I spend with scientific data, is a means of being present with the natural world, emphasising my strong sense of ecological awareness and care. I am interested in being with data as ‘one would be with a friend’ suggesting that data could be seen as a ‘being’ – not a sentient, organic living being but as a data body, that can exist through different means and to different ends, and that possesses its own kind of existence and relationality. My dual practices—creating in the studio and collaborating in emergent live performance— explore how we can engage with and interpret environmental data from multiple ethico-political, material and non-representational perspectives, suggesting that I am not just processing information but also interrogating the power dynamics and environmental implications embedded in data. I have recently come to describe myself as a “shepherdess” to add a poetic layer to the laborious and detailed process of transforming raw scientific data into art. I am embodying a caretaker role for the earth, guiding not just the data, but the attention and awareness of my audience toward the natural elements and processes I engage with.
I was born in Cardiff, UK. I attended University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, The Royal Academy Schools, and Goldsmiths College, University of London. I have been the recipient of numerous ACE grants, and the ACE funded Berlin residency. I have been awarded an Arts Council Wales Major Creative Wales Award and an ACW Large Production Grant. I have been co-investigator in several recent NERC funded projects and recently the recipient of the inaugural Live Art Rural UK fellowship with Live Art Development Agency (LADA). I have recently directed and performed two stage productions – When Seeds Speak; A Seedy Ensemble for the Seligman Theatre, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales and When Earth Speaks: A Dirty Ensemble, Aberystwyth Arts Centre. Solo exhibitions include When Earth Speaks, Vane, Newcastle, Crossed Paths – Sheep, Oriel Davies, Newtown, Passage, Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Art, Bath, is it ok if? Aberystwyth Arts Centre, and Crossed Paths – Scots Pine is in the Art Collection, Carlow, Ireland. I have exhibited internationally for over 20 years for example at BALTIC Contemporary Art, Gateshead, Site Gallery, Sheffield, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Charlie Smith Gallery, London, Torrance Art Museum, California, Galerie Schuster, Berlin, and the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Lithuania. I am currently postgraduate and PhD research supervisor and lecturer at Aberystwyth University. I am currently making work for Soil; The World At Our Feet for Somerset House in Jan 2025, a landmark exhibition examining the role soil plays in all our lives, co-curated by the Land Gardiners; Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy, curator and writer May Rosenthal and Claire Catterall, Senior Curator at Somerset House Trust.