ARTISTS TALKING

All my stuff was crammed into plastic bags as I trudged through the London puddles – leaving my flat in a rush (after a falling out with my landlord), finishing my MA, and getting out of the city. Climbing aboard a train, heading north, no idea what to do next.

This was 2001. I’d had some success – getting into the Jerwood Drawing Prize, Pizza Express Prospects Drawing Prize, and Mostyn Open and showing (and selling) my work with Discerning Eye. But now I was skint, back living with my parents, and my drawings, still a bit soggy, sitting on a shelf. My drawings: a weather map torn from a newspaper with the clouds cut out, the marks made by coloured pencils on the packet they came in, a tube map with new rail lines biroed in.

At a loose end, I applied for the Arts Council England, South East setting up scheme. Money, business support, a ‘materials’ (read laptop) budget, a free studio and the next thing I know, I’m moving to Milton Keynes with eighteen months to get my head around life, make some work and make a name.

It's not been as easy as the advert promised – living a bit out of the loop, struggling to make ends meet, but I’ve got by. And got on – successful group shows in London, inclusion in the Contemporary Art Society’s Artfutures, and work in another Mostyn Open.

Now it’s raining again. I’ve just put up the work of the past months. Called ‘Pooleyville’ after the back-of-envelope sketches for Milton Keynes by architect FW Pooley. It’s a collection of old masters for the new city, quirky sketches of life here – a stag steps out high on a rocky crag (the stag from a tourist guide, the crag an entire packet of Blu-Tack), a glossy photo of a glacier turns out to be a sort of bank heist – a free leaflet about debit cards, its text obliterated with the pen-on-a-chain done whilst waiting to see the manager – the bank unwittingly providing space and materials to deconstruct their advertising. It looks like this is the way forward – to make work in the spaces I can, for nothing. 2005 sees a solo exhibition in Northampton and, weather permitting, the transfer of my guerrilla tactics back to London.