Toilet Roll Heaven

Compassionate Nun

Does God Exist?

Stern Sister

My foray into the delights of toilet roll began after seeing the "Lavatory Portraits" of Nina Katchadourian, a series of photographs and videos which began spontaneously in the bathroom during a long haul flight.  Using only toilet roll and a camera phone she began to make a series of stern looking portraits in the Flemish Style. See the link below for more details.

http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/photography/sa-flemish.php

I was inspired by the humour, simplicity and spontaneity of her creative act within the confines of an aeroplane toilet, and her worked stayed with me  - as it made me smile every time I thought about it.

A few months later I found myself in a bed and breakfast in Leeds - with time to kill, the weather outside was miserable and cold so confined as I was to a dreary room I tried to amuse myself the best I could.  It was then that I remembered the toilet roll experiments of Nina Katchadourian, I walked into the bathroom and reached for the toilet roll.

What ensued was several hours of toilet roll delight.  In the following weeks, whenever I had a chance, I found myself in the bathroom seeking out the company of the toilet roll and an array of characters emerged - housemaids, secretaries, nuns, brides, sad clowns, empty nest widows,  and of course the "Tory Smile" - more of which later.

House of Bones

What do people do in Museums?

New Sheep Mask in Progress

Jilted Lover Eating Soup Alone

Shadows on a Drawing

Sheep Eyes Research

Conversations with Edward

A Spinster and a Bastard

Morgan the Fay

Don's House

Table Football Sexuality

Thinking of Sanri

 In the Bathtub

Here is a small collection of drawings of my very good friend Mr Edward Pope. These drawings were made during many long conversations with Edward in Oxford in the winter of 2012 and early spring of 2013.

In this collection the conversations and the drawings had a way of fusing together as Edward told me long and colourful stories from his life, from the lives of his friends and from the lives of the people he is researching as part of his historical studies of the London subculture in the18th Century.

Edward has long been a chronicler of peoples lives, through his songs, conversations and historical research particularly of the English subcultures and alternative scenes of which he has been a part since he turned 18 in London in 1968.

Early Dream Monoprints

These mono-prints were made in Oxford in my early twenties and are possibly some of my earliest attempts at trying to bring up images from my unconscious dreaming mind. I have not shown them to anyone since the time of making, over 15 years ago. The process of working with dreams is still very much part of my practice. I feel that I am endlessly scratching the surface of a subterranean night time world. I am currently seeking a residency in Berlin where I will immerse myself more fully in this practice in order to create new work, find fellow dream practitioners and build on my twenty years of dream research.   

I have written more about my exploration of dreams here, http://vibrationsartjournal.com/2014/01/29/212/

Ancestors

I made this drawing in 2012 and it is based on a photograph of of my grandmother in the arms of her  mother. The photograph was taken in the summer of 1899 in Birmingham, England.

Tragically my grandmother grew up with no memories of her mother, her mother died of a heart condition about 18 months after this photograph was taken, leaving her in the care of her father.  

Her father clearly did not cope as less than two years later he committed suicide, grief stricken at the death of his young wife. This drawing is based on the last photograph to be taken of my grandmother with her father, the photograph was rescued from a fire and the face of her father was destroyed leaving only his shirt collar and torso visible. My grandmother never spoke of her parents, but she did speak warmly of her grandfather and uncles, she never spoke of her loss - and such a great loss to lose both parents by the time she was three, instead she said that she had been a rather spoilt child as she grew up in a large household with six uncles.

I have long been fascinated with family patterns.  Are we born with the unresolved traumas of our ancestors? Can such unresolved traumas be inherited and passed down unconsciously to our own children? Can a trauma be transmitted genetically or through conditioning? Is is possible that one person in a family can take on or embody unexpressed feelings and emotions unconsciously, and if so is it their role to become conscious of and let go of these patterns?

To what extent is our role as parents, to what extent is it possible, even desirable, to try to become conscious of and let go of inherited trauma and patterns of behaviour?  How can such work, the releasing and letting go of old patterns that no longer serve but hinder, be made visible or is it invisible work? These questions inform my work as an artist - not on a scientific or intellectual basis, but more from an instinctive and feeling basis and, I think, from a deep desire to heal.

A strange thing happened when I made this  drawing.  As I drew my great grandmother she became more and more male, and weirdly she started to take on the features of an ex-boyfriend with whom I had a particularly intense but brief relationship.  I was very surprised when this happened, it came out this way unconsciously, but somehow it was right.  Somehow my brief relationship had triggered deep-rooted emotions in me, that were very old, perhaps not even belonging to me, and suddenly here he was looking back at me holding my grandmother in Birmingham in 1899.  


The practice of making art and in particular when drawing, for me has so often and still is, a mysterious and profound experience often generating more questions than answers.