PRACTICE IN MOTION
exhibitions, intallations, and artist residencies.
The old 120 film was processed by us in our temporary darkroom using the caffenol method, and the new 35mm film processed using fomopan black and white reversal kit.
During this residency we took part in an open studio, welcoming the public to come and observe the space that 5 artists had managed to take over and combine their very different practices into one enclosed room. Our dark room was set up, our cameras and equipment were knolled and our film negatives hanging on a homemade washing line; for this open call me and my partner also created a zine to showcase the different double exposure images taken.
back lane west residency
february 2026
My residency at Back Lane West in Redruth was a period of two weeks that I used to experiment a new method of making with a fellow student Vanessa Backus; this method was centred more of material and action rather than the creation of a concept or theme beforehand. We achieved this by starting the residency with a floor full of bits and bobs- old camera pieces, lenses, filters, wires, copper, dried plants, paper, fishing equipment and projectors. We began taking all of this part, dissecting the objects into simple materials that we then reinvented into something new; this meant nothing more than two people nosey enough to try and figure out how things work, and in response create their own forms of machinery, movement and sculpture.
Throughout this project me and Vanessa found ourselves constantly surrounded by circles, dissecting our belongings meant we were left with various sizes of circle and the movement of spinning- this was something we latched onto, soon everything became some form of circle and anything ‘other’ was cast aside, separate
B&W 35mm, ilford, machine processed
Me and Vanessa spent the first week creating these sculptures, playing with how light reacted and played with them- we were beginning to notice a shift and a growing distance between the appearance of the sculpture and how we felt ourself capturing and documenting them (the sculptures were largely objective, very honest and explicit while the documentation was incredibly abstract and distorted).
The second week was spent planning and filming these sculptures on 8mm film and photographing them on 35mm- while continuing to play, and grow our collection of things.
We hand processed our film using e-6 chemicals so that we were able to project this final film at our open studios alongside our sculptures.
‘Round In Circles’
st.ives porthmeor residency
march 2026
This opportunity was a 2 week residency at Porthmeor studios in st ives; there was no clear direction to how this residency was going to go and I was unsure myself how this would help me and my practice.. I applied with a companion/ partner in crime for this residency (Sophie Hunter) , and we turned the space given to us into our own practical darkroom. Over the two weeks we explored st ives with a range of old cameras, including a ful-vue 120mm camera, a kershaw eight-20 penguin 120mm camera, a chinon?, and even pinhole cameras made from our old cans. We used old film and new film- something that I feel is obvious to spot in the images produced.
vimto can pinhole, studio interior, caffenol hand processed
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dissertation equivalent
december 2025
My Research Statement; “My research practice explores the relaticnal space between the human and the photographic material, treating film not as a passive medium but as an active collaborator. by integrating analytical inquiry with hands on experimentation, i have created a body of work that acts as a meeting point,a site where human intention and material agency encounter one another. this practice -as - research approach allowed me to merge technical skill, conceptual reflection, and experimental processes into a single, evolving conversation.
I
combined planned techniques with unplanned interventions, using both conventional chemicals and less traditional materials. these experiments opened space for chance and material behaviour to speak. through this process, i discovered how little 1 truly know, and how unavoidable my humanness is, leaking into every decision and gesture. i realised that i have never created alone. film has always been my partner, shaping the work as much as i do, responding even as i attempt to understand it.
This recognition reshaped my understanding of materiality, aligning my work with ideas of concrete photography and the flexible nature of photographic indexicality. within concrete photography, the image is freed from representational expectations; the photograph no longer stands in for something else but reveals its own conditions of production here, indexicality becomes fluid: not a fixed trace of external reality, but of interaction- discussion - between human gesture and material response.
The films surface holos evidence of both of us - my atempts to explore it and its amempis to assert presence. in this sense, the works produced are not images of something but manifestatons from something, arising directly.
From our shared encounter.
I extend an invitation: do not seek to understand this soley through my translaton. go and speak with film yourself. begin the conversation between you and your collaborator. accept the discomfort of the silence, the dark, and the unfamiliar language. Learn it, listen to it. And eventually speak it.
Installation including; Written word, phytograms, chemigrams, film soup, solarization, CMYK screen print, and projection of slides
Pinhole experiments Unused script written for a conversation with film
Phytograms, chemigrams, film soup, and expired film ‘fails’
‘a conversation with film’
december 2025
For this project I was given the task to present my work to an audience; at this point in my practice, I was very much aware how i was beginning to percieve film as an active collaborator in my work- And so I saw this as a great opportunity to commincate and speak to my material collaborator, film. Throughout my work produced in this study block, i felt film was extremely preent, showing itself to me in the inability of me controlling my own outcomes, but the hardest part was figuring out how i was going to commincate with film while still trying to get a physical response or result to show the tutors.
After many experiments I decided a slow proces photo such as pinhole photography, left over an extended bit of time, would be an effective way for both myself and film to be present together on a single bit of film.
I had produced a body of work (coloured slides) that became a sort of portfolio for me to present to film, showing and explaining what experiemnts and findings i had got during my time working with the material; this was to be projected behind me while my pinhole cameras were set up watching, reacting and developing a inprint onto its surface.
st.ives film school
june 2025
This residency was a 4 day opportunity for me to learn in greater detail how photochemical processes work; it helped me understand what was required when delving into this medium and how I could go about using it in my practice. The residency taught me about how 8mm and 16mm bolex cameras worked and functioned, the film stock and settings required, the hand processing steps afterwards, as well as more eco friendly alternatives when partaking in these photochemical processes. It was massively influential in my practice and my abilities to use film as well as appreciate it.
Within the residency I took part in loading and filming multiple 8mm black and white films as well as 16mm colour film; we also created a phytogram with plants picked in the local area.
We hand processed this film using seaweed and plants, drying it outside in the streets of st ives.
“In this way, my practice becomes a form of resistance. It resists forgetting, closure, and the idea that only certain things are worth preserving. It takes the discarded archives of families and rejects the motion of erasure.”
“My practice is grounded in acts of investigation and research, in the slow and deliberate accumulation of materials, stories, and impressions. Collecting becomes both method and metaphor—an intuitive process of gathering traces, objects, and narratives that might otherwise be overlooked or forgotten.”
“I move through it collecting—images, fragments, objects—evidence of past and present lives. But when I return to ‘my’ room, I’ve brought these strangers back with me. Their images hang on my walls, their stories thread through my writing, their belongings sit beside mine. “
This conversation with film lasted just over an hour, with me changing positions and slides throughout. Although the slides are not visible in detail I was fasinated to see what film had chosen to document from our hour spent together- leaving multiple exposures of me in different positions as well as extremely present textures from the film itself. This texture was both due to the fact it was expired, but also became present after hand processing the film in caffenol and expired fix.
This project took months of experiemnting with pinholes, timings and brighness of the enviroments i was in, but also development times varying due to the expired rolls of film i was using and expired chems- all things i prefer working with to allow space for film to become less controlled and more present.
‘room of the unreliable archivist’
may 2025
I turned my room into an archive of all the strangers I had shared my space with, whose stories I was merging with my own. I was feeling my room become less my own and more the room of hundreds of strangers and their lives. Once I had collected the memories of unknown people, I began investigating them, trying my best to piece together family members and memorable days, and in some cases visiting the very locations they had been as an attempt to become closer with these strangers; how was what I was experiencing now different to what they had once experienced?
My room was opened to visitors who were invited to explore the strangers and their memories, and to interact with all the different mediums that captured them; this included physical photographs, slides, negatives, tapes and written postcards and letters.
For this project I had a small bit of writing to accompany the work, explaining my practice at the time...
“Studio practice is not something I step into and out of—it surrounds me constantly. It lives in the objects I gather, the people I encounter, the spaces I inhabit. The studio isn’t just a room; it’s a condition. I carry its weight everywhere. The things I collect and create begin to accumulate and blur into one another. Photographs from my own life merge with images from strangers, forming timelines that fold in on themselves. My writing becomes porous, threaded with the voices of books on my shelves, their words slipping into mine like Chinese whispers. “
“I collect not to enshrine the past, but to resist disappearance. To leave a record, however fragile, of lives that might otherwise fade.”
‘lost and found’
november 2024
fab617fa
This installation was a university second year project that centred itself around the overlapping of strangers and their narratives. Using found photography through house clearance and exploring my role in piecing together and manipulating images to create alternative stories. Multiple strangers placed together in one piece of work, unknown to the audience if they are one family or multiple different ones.
Each light box focused on different components, highlighting how different groups of people and their archives can find connections through similar subjects; one light box focused on the theme of home, one on focused on the beach and the other on adventures and holidays- all things that I often found within an archive of a family.
These images were screenprinted onto thin paper and overlapped.