| Project Title | Lost and Found |
| Venue | Cowlishaw Works, Sharrowvale Road, Sheffield S11 8XD |
| Date | 7th and 8th March 2025 |
Artist Statement
I am an artist working across the media of painting, drawing, assemblage and collage. Through my practice I represent ephemeral moments that are long forgotten. For the past five years I have been working from a studio adjacent to a salvage yard which has informed my practice by providing a never-ending source of found materials and oral histories from the regular deliveries of the house clearance vans, often containing artefacts created in Sheffield. I create an iterative diary of my collections which forms a daily practice of self-sustainability.
In my practice I build up layers, scraping back to reveal hidden surfaces. The shapes, colours and textures of the handmade objects I find stimulate memories, the fingerprints or scored marks of the maker represent specific moments in time. The cutlery and knives stamped, Made in Sheffield provide fragments of my family’s past and I use storytelling within my work to re-enliven these histories.
Contextual Statement
The culmination of my Final Major Project is both an exhibition of artwork and a printed book realised in my hometown of Sheffield. The resultant body of work has been derived from auto theoretical, historical and socio-historical research. I have explored the history of my grandmother, Minnie’s family of makers back to the Eighteenth Century at Shepherd’s Wheel, a water-powered knife-grinding workshop alongside exploring the trades that arose in Sheffield from the Industrial Revolution and their impact on health and well-being, child welfare, gender inequality in the workplace and the use of now unethical materials.
In my practice materiality informs the material qualities of my work. The materials, and methods I have employed directly reference the variety of production during this period, and consider the duration and repetition found in many forms of manual employment. I have drawn on my prior study in printmaking and textiles to explore the importance of possessions in concepts of memory and identity through drawing, painting and an installation of 50 clay impressions on cradled panels incorporating industrial salvage, rusted tools, found objects from Shepherd’s Wheel and heirlooms from my grandmother creating a narrative throughout the work.
Reusing and respecting our precious resources is especially important to me, therefore I repurpose and recycle an endless supply of found objects and materials within my work and aim to use environmentally safe products wherever possible, placing my practice within a sustainable context.
In my artistic research I have considered how the ghostly cast impressions of Racheal Whiteread’s sculpture retain memories of artefacts and place. Furthermore I have referenced the portraits of young women cutlery factory workers by Sir William Rothenstein and examined the Post-Industrial landscapes of Prunella Clough.
My project has been further enriched by a collaboration with a group of six local female writers. By weaving excerts of their poetry through my paintings derived from the River Porter I have added a valuable layer of observation and historical reference.
Project Documentation
