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The ‘decorative’ is traditionally associated with feminine crafts; needlework, lace making, quilts and crochet. This is a subject that has been closely interpreted and challenged by feminist art historians of the last thirty years.

In Persia, carpets were thrown down in the desert to create an ‘instant garden’ in the sand. Distinctive repetitive pattern features highly in Eastern architecture and interior design and is integral to this culture.  In Celtic and Arabic decorative arts strong ties exist between the ‘real’ and the highly-stylized ‘diagrammatic’ flowers within elaborate designs.

In Europe, the Dutch Flower Painting tradition arose out of a particular set of circumstances during The Republic when painting was centred in Guilds. These paintings were for a domestic market, often purchased and produced by women. The tradition that emerged was both illusionistic and decorative, with an obsessive attention to detail that can be described as an ‘über-craft’: slow, ponderous, painstaking, illusion-making.

My project brings this concept together with the illusionistic lighting of Dutch Flower Painting to create highly-stylized photographic images that refer to and re-imagine these traditions.

CV

2006-2009:  MA Photography, Brighton University


1990-1994: BA Art History and Studio Practice, Goldsmiths College, London University

Other

2003-2007: Visiting Lecturer Royal College of Art, Winchester School of Art, Goldsmiths College and others


2003-2005: Founder/Director Brighton Photo Fringe

Selected exhibitions and art fairs

Group shows
2012: British/Summer/Time, Diemar Noble Gallery, London
2011: Summer Show, The Little Black Gallery, London
2011: Natural Beauty, The Little Black Gallery, London
2010: This is Not the Chelsea Flower Show, Diemar Noble Gallery, London

2010: Hotel, The Artists Residence, Brighton
2009: Between the Hallucinatory and the Real, Brighton University MA Show

2006: City Running, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton