1. People in Order
2006 / video / 3 mins / shown on Channel 4 TV / collaboration with James Price
A series of four short films comprised of video portraits of hundreds of strangers met on the streets of the UK, arranged according to finite scales. People in Order - Age (below) depicts one person of every age from one to one hundred. The series People in Order was shown on Channel 4 TV (UK) after the evening news on four consecutive days.
People in Order - Age / video
2. One Brown Shoe
2013 / various materials / one hundred mismatched pairs of brown shoes
In 2013, one hundred married couples in twelve countries responded to an instruction to each make a single brown shoe using materials found around their homes. They were asked not to discuss the project with their partners and to make their shoe in secret. The shoes were revealed only once both were completed.
Made from cat food boxes, packing tape, knitting, childhood sneakers, stolen office supplies, plate steel, Cuban cigars, animal crackers, nut shells, and a thousand other odds and ends found in the house, each pair of shoes might be seen as a portrait – of two individuals, of one couple, and of the difference between the two.
above: One Brown Shoe (detail shot of eight pairs)
3. Artist Residency in Motherhood
September 2012 - May 2014 / durational project / website, motherhood
Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARiM) was a structured, fully-funded* artist residency that took place inside my own home and life as a mother of two young children.
Artist Residencies are usually designed as a way to let artists escape from the routines and responsibilities of their everyday life. Artist Residency in Motherhood is different. Set firmly inside the traditionally “inhospitable” environment of a family home, it subverts the art-world’s romanticization of the unattached artist and frames motherhood as a valuable site rather than an invisible labor, for exploration and artistic production. The residency is experienced via a website, the portfolio of works from the residency has been exhibited internationally. I'm currently exploring possibilities to pass on the residency to other mothers.
In my capacity as the world's first Artist-in-Residence-in-Motherhood 2012 - 2014 I completed a portfolio of 32 works that used motherhood as a material. Examples of these projects follow below.
*Funding for ARiM was provided by the Investing in Professional Artists Grants Program, a partnership of The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments and by The Sustainable Arts Foundation.
Artist Residency in Motherhood Sample Project / 63 Objects Taken From My Son's Mouth / acorn, bolt, bubblegum, buttons, carbon paper, chalk, Christmas decoration, cigarette butt, coins (GBP, USD, EURO), cotton reel, holly leaf, little wooden man, sharp metal pieces, metro ticket, nuts, plastic “O”, polystyrene, rat poison (missing), seeds, slide, small rocks, specimen vial, sponge animal, sticks, teabag, wire caps, wooden block / size laid out as shown 40" x 40" x 1"
Artist Residency in Motherhood Sample Project / The Distance I Can be From My Son - Park / video / 1 min
4. Open-Source Artist Residency in Motherhood
2016 - ongoing / website and self-directed artist-residency
I made a website www.artistresidencyinmotherhood.com that shares a free, downloadable Artist Residency for any Artist/Parent to undertake in their own home. Currently there are almost 300 registered artists-in-residence in 31 countries around the world. Click on the red markers below to view names, dates and websites of current residents.
5. Maternity Leave
2011 / baby monitor, custom plinth, microphone, laptop, internet, live audio feed, baby / Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
For the duration of the exhibition a microphone above our newborn baby's crib at home collected the sounds of our private domestic world (crying, screaming, singing, cooing, etc.) and transmitted them via live audio feed to the Carnegie Museum of Art. In the museum the sound was broadcast to visitors through a white plastic baby monitor placed in the middle of an echoing, otherwise empty gallery.
For the duration of the exhibition I was on "maternity leave" from my work as an artist. I negotiated with the museum that they publicly pay me $223 each week of the exhibition, an amount exactly equivalent to the government allowance for freelance artists I would be eligible for if I was living at home in England, rather than in the US where there is no paid federal maternity leave.
Maternity Leave / video documentation of installation / 1 min
6. Typewriter Drawings
2012 - ongoing / ink on typewriter paper / approx. 8.5" x 11" each
Big Flowery Pot / Typewriter Drawing / 2017 / Typewriter ink on paper / 8.5" x 11.5"
A series of drawings made entirely with a portable 1957 Smith-Corona Skyriter typewriter. This is one in a series of over 200 drawings, to see more from the series, click here.
7. Two Itinerant Quilters
Currently in Development / collaboration with Joanna Wright / performance, repaired clothing, patchwork quilt
A hand-sewn patchwork quilt and accompanying interactive digital archive, created from fabric diamonds cut from the clothing of hundreds of passing strangers.
Over the course of a public event, or in a public space, diamond-shaped pieces for a patchwork quilt are collected from fabric voluntarily cut from the clothing of passers-by. The resulting holes are hand-repaired then and there with contrasting fabrics, creating a visible missing patch in each participants clothing. The collected diamonds are hand-sewn together using a traditional paper-piecing method into a traditional pattern known as the “Tumbling Block”. The quilt grows as the piece is re-performed in various environments around the globe.
Two Itinerant Quilters: Collecting Station Set-up, cut clothing with hand repaired patch, participant after donating fabric, lay up of patchwork quilt made from patches cut from participants clothing.
