ARTISTS TALKING

Coupled with a particular emphasis on the 'natural' environment and on the interaction between nature and culture, my work can be seen as a direct descendent of the English obsession with landscape. It is through a critical examination of this 'natural' attraction to nature that my present work continues to develop. Usually context, research or process-based, my work utilises installation, video and digital media. Recent projects have included collaborative jam making and an environmental survey of a basement in Dorset for the 'Swipe' digital arts festival.

I moved from East London to rural Gloucestershire via the Southwest coast of Ireland six years ago. Since then, the non-urban or peripheral location as a site for the production and dissemination of contemporary art has become an increasingly important theme within my practice. After several years co-organising one-off projects with the Stroud Valleys Artspace studio group, I was instrumental in setting up the Re.projects space in 1999. Developing a programme of projects, exhibitions and events in collaboration with regional, national and international artists is now another important element in my practice.

The image accompanying this article was produced for an [a-n] MAGAZINE promotional card and features plastic bottle tops collected from beaches in Cornwall, Ireland and Brittany. The photo relates to a work I installed at Galleri 21 in Malmö, Sweden this August, but the card should be considered as a work in its own right. The context in which this operates is both that of the magazine and cards, and the networks through which they are circulated. As with the work in Malmö, the notion of circulation and the connections between apparently disparate systems and networks is central. Firstly the materials (bottle tops) are circulated as consumable items through the system of economic exchange. The detritus of this system is then re-distributed through the natural circulation of the oceans. My intervention in this process, through collection and re-presentation of the material, leads to its incorporation into a new cultural system. Finally a visual reproduction of the material is circulated, via the cultural-economic system of [a-n] MAGAZINE's marketing strategy; through a personal and professional network of contacts born of a combination of location, chance and design.