I never thought of it as an ugly structure, nor did I dislike it as being an industrial blot on our quaint coastline. Its vastness intrigued my childish sense of the world, feeling no more small against it’s size than I do now. Cockenzie Power Station is the largest structure East of Edinburgh until you reach the delights of the Cement Works and the Nucelar Power Station, though you cannot get so close to either. Between the sheet metal and sea you stand on gravel, eyes and face thrust upwards to attempt comprehension of the sheer scale of these smooth extrusions with no reference point against the infinity of the sky. This squat bulk and two pillars with it’s cladding of pipes and industrial mess made clouds for me and my brother before becoming an unseen in plain sight part of our decent into adulthood. Now years later I walk around it, seeing it’s insides for the first time and feel oddly sad.
Goodbye old friend, I guess we’ll get our clouds through the normal precipitation route from now on.
I have been underlining this fact in my words ever since my swift rejection from the Horizon Centre’s PhD programme. It’s there in my conversations about the interview, edging my words with a glitter of doubt and the supportive words and encouraging motions from friends, family, strangers remind me that I’m the only one I need to convince of this fact.
So… It wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t the right thing. Maybe later, maybe something else – still an achievement to be shortlisted. Doubt glitter static fastens itself to me in droves and I share it around, looking to be comforted in this act of sharing. Glitter, as a friend once told me, is ‘the herpes of craft supplies’ and almost (but not quite) impossible to get rid of. Share it around, rub it off on someone else and generally get on with it, girl.
Coming out of a month of receiving possibly life changing emails, prepping for the chance of a new life I felt deflated and drained. Ready to pack it in and hide in a cave of my own creation. The BCCA residency, which I had applied to at the beginning of the year, was a goal post on the path away from all of that. If not this residency, then what was I bothering with all of these lengthy applications for anyway.
I did it, it was great. I have since not transcribed over a single word until today, but now there are a handful of images and some words to be found here
And now the summer has snuck in, don’t let the cold fool you xx
Water Work is a series of new photography works capturing the free movement of constructed textile sculptures. The works explore the point at which fantasy and reality fuse; where the sculptures are figurative demonstrations of fabric’s unique reaction to the earth’s unseen forces, captured suspended in motion and in time. The series explores how the corporeal form can be represented through that most human of constructs: fabric, the material which links us across the many cultures of the world. The eerie sense of human familiarity the sculptures intimate as they move in their slow dance are captured and played with; presented both in and out of sequence, as a series and alone.
Writing about oneself or ones work is either disturbingly easy or disgustingly hard.
In relation to the upcoming exhibition of my odd assortment of works I have found that my lack of an artists statement is not only a gaping hole in my portrayal of myself and my work but also a major pain in my derrier now I come to write one.
So in the meantime here is a photograph I took and I line I wrote and some hope for me, for you and my heart between us.
Never have it said I didn’t see you when I went looking
