About Me

My photo
I am a practising Visual Artist/Maker based in South London. My work includes drawing, painting, mixed media, moving image and installation. My practice derives from my experience as a black British woman of dual heritage, a mother and aspects of my background thus far. I assemble, work and rework the multiple strands of this personal material to create work that comments on of issues of identity and culture within our racially complex sociality today.

Friday, October 26, 2012

‘African Textiles Today’


see blog entry 'Costume for Two' 

Fantastic to be included in this beautiful new book compiled by Chris Spring and published British Museum.  Images of my works ‘What’s Our Story ‘ a textile work commissioned by Brent Museum in response to the touring exhibition Fabric of a Nation. http://www.britishmuseumshoponline.org/search?q=African+Textiles+Today&q=African+Textiles+Today

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Peckham Library Reading Group

Reading as a root to drawing and planning new artworks

The first reading group visit.  This could be what I am looking for as part of my project stimulus.  It takes place in one of the mysterious bulbous objects entered from the fifth floor the rounded room is light and airy.  We read ‘A Worn Path’ by Eudora Welty, in sections and discuss each section as we go along, just realised we didn’t discuss the title which in fact is very relevant... Oh well...It’s a beautiful story and the discussions were in depth as we were just five people. 
Next a poem by Langston Hughes, the poets name jumped out at me directly and I mentioned my interest in the Harlem Renaissance artists and explained that this is how I knew of the writer.  The poem ‘Mother to Son’ has hugely universal theme, but my knowledge of the period in which it was written lead me to feel the hardship that had evoked such a poem.
The session perfect, I shall continue to attend and take the opportunity to pick up a couple of bargains in Rye Lane on route to Station.

Poem to Peckham Library


Peckham Library is an ideal place for me to find the stimulation I seek, it's a perfect sanctuary to nurture creative thought processes.


Poem to Peckham Library

Comfortable, Refurbished, Cocoon,
Surrounded by clear plate glass, like enormous screens featuring urban landscapes,
The clear blue sky of today is giving way to a rose pink light that streams in through the metal rafters high up in the modern design of the roof.  
The library is on the fourth floor and the view from the Ladies’ toilet window is expansive. North facing it spans from the city to way-out West beyond the London Eye, taking the Shard as a central feature.
Reading Jackie Kay poems I sit on a seat in the teenage corner as the sunlight dwindles altering the light in the cavernous space.   I am relaxed.
 I occasionally look up from my book to observe my fellow librarians (best word I can think of for users of the library) or libritarians, (no such word) as the move around or occupy the single seat computer desks one behind the other in a row stretching back into the building along-side the window.  All seemed engrossed in their individual research pursuits, and the silence is only broken by the occasional bleep of buzz of a mobile phone, calling for attention.
There are no teenagers here in the corner.
I glance at the titles, Drama Queens, Angel Blood, Angel Fire, Blood Ties.......  Return to reading ‘Other Lovers’.

I can return to reading here in Peckham Library amongst the strong black building supports that stretch at different angles, the strange bulbous bamboo observatories floating above head height (What are they?) and the general quirkiness of the modern architecture.  ‘Going to See King Lear’.  
16th October

Followers