Image - New Work: Moon, produced using my seaweed-gin film developer recipe, as part of a recent A-N Bursary.

Castlefield Gallery Feature

I was asked to contribute to the Castlefield Gallery ongoing blog series  - the Artists and Sustainability Spotlight. You can see the blog post on the Castlefield Gallery website.

Forces of Nature
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

I will be speaking at the Forces of Nature symposium at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. I am looking forward to hearing from the other speakers, and seeing Roger Acklings’ beautiful artwork in the gallery. I’m also planning to see the Helen Chadwick exhibition at The Hepworth in Wakefield. I studied a BA in Fine Art at Leeds Art University, so I am excited to return to the city!

Symposium Synopsis

‘Recent years have seen an efflorescence of art practices that engage with climate and the creative and destructive forces of nature. This symposium will address a wide variety of connected subjects such as artistic responses to coastal erosion, curatorial climate-focused challenges, the agency of materials, glacial engagements with contemporary art, the development of digital technologies, astronomical photography and interaction with fungal bodies. It will also look at key artists working in this area including Abbas Akhavan, Ilya Dogov, Joan Jonas, and Kerem Ozan Bayraktar.’

Online Duotone Cyanotype Workshop
Draw Brighton

Subsidised by a recent A-N Bursary, I will be leading an online workshop of the duotone cyanotype process with Draw Brighton in association with the Mawddach Residency.

In this workshop you will learn how to produce two digital negatives on acetate which will provide the basis for your two-coloured cyanotypes. I will demonstrate the cyanotype duotone process including how to bleach cyanotypes with soda crystals, and tone them with tannin-based substances such as green tea.

Due to the ‘trial’ nature of the workshop, the workshop costs just £3.

Mawddach Residency Write Up

In March I wrote a small text for the Mawddach Residency blog, which you can read here . Here is an excerpt below;
 
‘In Winter 2025, I was Artist In Residence at Mawddach Residency. I found out very close to the residency that I had funding via a bursary from A-N. This gave me the confidence to try out some experimental ideas, whilst also pushing me to spend a longer time working through the results of the residency.

Before attending the residency, I had been working with sustainable photographic processes (such as making my own plant based film developers) and analogue astronomical photography. However, I had not combined the two processes together!
 
Whilst on residency I was keen to take analogue photographs of the night sky and use my seaweed-gin film recipe to develop the images. I spent time outside at night taking photographs of the stars. Now I’m back at my own darkroom in Ramsgate, I have been testing out different development times.
 
In addition to this, I also took some photographs of areas surrounding the residency  for my ‘Submerged Landscapes’ project. According to the Climate Central app, areas of the UK are likely to be affected by rising tides. Fairbourne, sitting close to the Mawddach Estuary, is said to be one of the first towns that may be abandoned due to sea level rise.’

As I wrote this text in March, some of the work that was speculative has now been realised. For example, I have now produced a photograph of the Moon using my seaweed gin film developer (see first image) and have succeeded in producing duotone cyanotypes of the Mawddach landscape.

Support Me

Did you know that my Patreon page now operates as a searchable resource for my analogue photography experiments since 2020? On my Patreon page, you can find recipes and tutorials for most of the processes I use. I believe that it is important to keep this information free source, but if you’d like to support my practice I would welcome donations. All proceeds go towards the further development of my practice.

- Patreon  (£10 Subscription includes: Monthly postcard and regular tutorials and videos. There are lower tiers available.)

For £10+ Patreon Subscribers, this month I am offering a postcard of the Pinwheel Galaxy. It is a reproduction of a duotone photogravure produced as part of my collaborative project In Praise Of Raw Data.