Where the Tide Turns

In 2024 I was selected to participate in Collect Open at Somerset House in London, as part of a larger international fair for contemporary craft and design presented by the Crafts Council of England. It showcases ambitious, conceptual installations and artworks created by individual artists or collectives, giving them a unique opportunity to exhibit alongside prestigious galleries. It is designed to encourage artists to push creative boundaries and offers emerging and established makers a chance to be to be discovered by collectors, curators, and journalists. My reason for participating came from a desire to expand my practice beyond a regional focus and showcase what I call the ‘impossible delicacy’ of my work. My goal was to make a cohesive collection of museum-quality work, with which I could court museum curators.

It proved to be a challenging undertaking for me, requiring an intense, eight month effort in my rural north Antrim studio through dark winter months, to create an entirely new body of work. This work centred on adapting and reworking found scientific lab ware, creating sculptural pieces of a scale and complexity beyond anything that I had attempted before. It culminated in transporting everything in a gut-wrenching twenty-five hour journey via van and ferry, across the Irish Sea and into the maw of the big smoke. Despite every bump and pot hole encountered in the two hundred and sixty three miles of motorway between Ballintoy and London, the delicate fruits of my labour miraculously survived intact.