Penwith Gallery, St Ives, 31st Jan -29 Feb 2020
Karen McEndoo and Katharine Nicholls invited me to join them in an exhibition at the Penwith Gallery in St Ives with the theme of surveillance. We all responded to this tricky contemporary theme in our own ways, and our initial group discussions considered a breadth of possible avenues for exploration including the addictive nature of the contemporary peeping Tom; stalking people through the traces they leave on the web and the traces that reveal locations and associations as well as thoughts, interests and desires. In the relentless erosion of individual privacy, we all felt a latent paranoia that our electronic devices are not only watching but actually controlling us. In response to that I became interested in possible blank spots in the surveilled environment, places beyond the cameras’ view, and developed a particular interest in observing and valuing objects that might be of no apparent consequence to that all seeing eye. Twigs seemed pretty prevalent to me in my small world view walking to and from the studio so I decided they would be my focus.