My father died in 1992 and this led indirectly to post grad. art therapist training at Hertfordshire University (1994-6). I returned to Jersey in 1996 and became a single parent for a while, looking after my daughter, Robyn, who was born in 1988. I worked as an art therapist, began work on a text called P. and started showing work.
I began a part time art psychotherapy MA at Goldsmiths in 1999, which marks the start of my disenchantment with art (psycho)therapy. I came across Zizek’s writing and started reading Lacan and Lacanians.
I continued showing video, texts and paintings, hasd szupervision with a Lacanian analyst in Rennes, then began cancer treatment 2008-11. I met Ruth Carter and talking house(s) begins with a story... and it’s the story of my time with her.
If it weren’t for this text and early versions of it, there would be too much to say at this point.
Ruth died towards the end of 2014 from neutropenic sepsis following ongoing breast cancer treatment.
Ruth's influence is felt in talking house(s), but it's also an impossible or unwritable text. She didn't want to be forgotten and a new body of work begins with grief. Finding a way to make sense of what remains leads to proposals that come out of the text. It includes reference to specific proposals.
My work begins with language and texts and language is sometimes flat and opaque. Video and painting provide some respite in my case and installations and partial reenactments can be a way of taking solitary practice further. Here funding, support and collaboration lead away from limited means.
Stills accompanying texts on both websites may seem arbitrary sometimes. They are sometimes part of different archive that can have to do with video and a move away from texts and spoken language.
Psychoanalysis makes reference to unconscious processes and the work of art in digital times, at some point, lets go of theory (and practice). It’s very much a contention and small statement. A text called dreams follows on another page (on the other website).