narratives in pictures

I have been thinking of how to create alternative narratives in the way we read and the way we look. I’ve gone back to my copy of ‘Ways of Seeing’ by John Berger a book, which in honesty I haven’t looked at since the first year of Uni. It has made me rethink the idea of effective visual essays and ponder why it has not been utilised to a larger extent in the traditional novel.
I have been taking photographs on my mobile that remind me of potential plot turning points.

what i've been writing this week

This week I have finally managed to complete my Arts Council application and send it off to Manchester to be assessed. In any case it was a good Monday. Since then writing creatively has been easier and I have been producing some new text, which is always exciting. Now I guess all I can do is wait the six weeks that it will take them process my application and hope for the best. In the meantime I continue to do what I love best.

Anthony is standing at the bus stop. It is six am and the fog surrounds him deeply. ‘It’s just as well’ he thinks, this mossy, sticky dream state suits him. He knows it won’t allow hope that the day might be special, but gives him the resolve to see it through, because after all it is only just a dream. It’s November and the days don’t start for several more hours, only half people are awake now, four including him.

A man in large tan boots stands stoic, he doesn’t require words just concise stares and a seat facing a window.

There are also two Indian girls chattering in what he assumes is Urdu. He can never determine what any of their conversations are about even though he has listened to them for almost a year now. He wonders where they are going, if its work or a ridiculously early start at university. He can imagine them in a physics department somewhere mixing, calculating, peering at paper streams of data. Especially the thin pretty one whose veiled head can’t hide the abundance of her dark thick hair. He likes her. She doesn’t talk quite as loudly as the rounded one who reminds him of Kay, the girl who gave him his first kiss.

The kiss had taken place when he was sixteen at his friend Irvins house. He had shown up to the party around eight with some beer he had stolen from his dad. It had been easy slipping in to the house and finding the girl who was a bit drunk, unsure of herself but hiding it under a low cut shirt that accentuated her small lumps of breast. Her name was Kay and she had a nose that didn’t quite fit her face, but she smiled a lot and that had made Anthony like her. He hadn’t tried to lure her in, just made sure that when she was susceptible to making out he would be at hand. And so Kay had been his first real kiss.

The next Monday at school he had pretended not to know her and when they had met in an empty corridor he had looked in to the distance, pretending to not see her. He had felt her hurt burning then through the sweater that now covered her chest and would for the rest of the time he knew her. That had been his first mistake with women and since then he had never quite learned how to know someone. The embarrassment he felt about his first encounter was still crippling. A laugh from one of the Indian girls pulled him out of his reverie. He looked up, raised his hand and the bus stopped.

I am an interdisciplinary artist committed to making conceptual work in any medium that best represents the idea. I do not limit myself to working in the white cube, and work in response to the context of my surroundings. I enjoy working with other artists and sharing ideas. My practice is process orientated and includes long periods of research and development during this time I produce works-in–progress that manifests itself through an array of mediums i.e. performance, sound, video, photography and text. In my writing, these works-in-progress have become and continue to be useful tools when defining character relationships and emotions.