Telling stories in bronze
My passion is for telling stories in bronze – of the struggles for social justice and telling the stories of the lives of those missing from our visual and written histories. A statue must be a catalyst for change. My life-long activism weaves its way through my artistic practice, one statue at a time.
My passion is for telling stories in bronze of struggles for social justice
I’m perhaps best known for my bronze public commissions such as Sir Nigel Gresley at King’s Cross Station, the women biscuit factory workers – the Cracker Packers – in Carlisle, Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy in Congleton and suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester, winner of the Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture 2021.
Sculptural choreography harnessing sound
But my artistic practice is never static. Choreography underpins it all; choreographing stories in bronze, choreographing dancers, choreographing the sounds of nature. The outputs vary but the motivation remains the same. I want to move people, literally, figuratively. And always with a political twist.
Rather than clay, I use a dynamic modelling material – a group of dancers – improvising to the sounds of the Knepp scrubland
Frustrated with the inertness of bronze, in Sculptural Murmurings I develop a form of sculptural choreography harnessing sound. Rather than clay, I use a dynamic modelling material – a group of dancers – improvising to the sounds of the Knepp scrubland over headphones. These are soundscapes of hope, of burgeoning biodiversity.
I’m a Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors (MRSS), the Society of Women Artists and the Wildlife Sound Recording Society.
