Lynda Beckett

Unfolding Narratives

April 2024

Spider-fly enabled a visual and physical manifestation to occur through its being – in the form of an installation. The work materialised as one entity in response to a call for artwork during the Unfolding Narratives (2024) exhibition at LCC.

April 2024

Spider-fly is a knotwork – an entanglement of a previous work, To Return, to Rewind, to Reform (2021), and a development of two other works, Ten knots within a knotwork (2024) and The sound of Spider-fly (2024), and seven sticky flypapers. It is the development of two works made in 2024 and underscores the notion of my practice-based research always being in process. My research practice has evolved through lines, folds, knots and knotworks, with sound as a minor consideration, albeit present.

The installation of Spider-fly revealed and underscored the necessity of sound as a significant entity within my evolving research. It became apparent that using sound would enable further investigation into the intangible space between words and sounds, into the unseen and often unknown—a sensual space that remains difficult to put into words. This installation was the first time I had made a space for the underlying notions of this inquiry, the process of working through grief alongside Deleuzian theory, to be publicly viewed.

March 2024

March 2024

Evolving knots emerged as I pulled four knots from Ten knots within a knotwork (2024). Curious to see what happened when the words lost their form as language, I stretched the structure of the words forms and thought more about rhythms, and wondered, what happens when language moves beyond human interpretation?

February 2024

Ten knots within a knotwork was formed while thinking through making. The work entangles two diaries written at the beginning of my research. Here I have selected eight pages of 50 page document.

During the making concepts of boundaries, opacity and structure where challenged as images seeped through words and words through images. The boundaries enforced by InDesign became part of the work as I wanted to push the limits of the design programme and its structures.

Édouard Glissant and Gilles Deleuze seep through the work. Glissant because of his notion of opacity and Deleuze for his thoughts on deterritoralisation.

This piece is an entanglement of knots within a knotwork and the pages are shown in no particular order.

November 2023

October 2023

Acknowledging the unseen, I went on a quest, not knowing what I was looking for, but aware it lay with-in the gaps. This piece is made of eleven chapters. In-between each of them is a gap, and on either side is another the gap. These gaps are not impenetrable. The access is easy. Step from one to the other, and as with any linear form in motion there is that movement that compels the viewer to go with the flow.

One might say there are two threads of thought within this piece, the audio and the visual. And yet as the maker, perhaps my intention is to pull you into a third, and then fourth space. By this I mean, if you are an audio-visual being, my intention is to pull you into a space that is seemingly familiar, yet slightly distorted, or even disturbing. Sounds and images simultaneously enter your mind and then roam amongst memories to production another fiction, drawn from a distance memory that becomes real for a moment, before dissipating into another space.

The invisible space between screen and viewer becomes a hyphen that links the space of in-between. This space of nothingness enables connections to form, threads to be tied, and lines to be drawn.

For me this work is, perhaps, a bridge and an invisible hiatus, that enables the passage for what is with-in into filterout in visual form. The one constant here is the constant with. To be with regardless of whether you are ‘in’ or ‘out’, alive or dead is irrelevant. It is the with that drives the flow forwards.

When I decide to split the words and place a hyphen in between with and in, what am I doing? Am I giving the words a structure to hold onto? Am I giving the words stability or making the place more vulnerable, as there are now two points of disconnect between the words. Or does the hyphen, add another element with-in the structure to bring unity?

October 2023

A splinter, a tear, a rupture, the hyphen tears into the fabric of sense, staking its ground between breaths. It is no mere sign, no idle placeholder; it is a gash, a convulsion demanding to be felt. And here I am, tied to its vibrating thread, caught in the hum of its in-between. Knotting Sound (2023) - the sound of the knot itself - echoes as I claw at the hyphen’s abyss, compelled to fill it but never to mend.

Uninvited, the hyphen splits words, exposing the spaces it claims to hold. What is this parasitic shard? It chains in and between, forcing coexistence yet never unity. The ‘n’ presses into its edge, the ‘b’ recoils, and I am caught in their tension.

The hyphen forced me to listen - not with ears but through the voids it carved. Sound became its voice, white noise stretching and shattering in endless loops of becoming. This rupture - a pulse that tears and holds simultaneously - resides where connection and severance collide, where one becomes two and two dissolve.

I am caught within its knot, woven into its fabric. The hyphen, the sound, the knotwork—these are collaborators, shaping and reshaping my practice. Knotting Sound (2023) breathes, mutates, and bends the hyphen into a portal, a space of multiplicity. It stretches beyond borders, transforming into an evolving audio-visual piece.

To knot sound is to carve resonant spaces charged with potential. The hyphen threads entities into a tenuous embrace, creating something both fragmented and whole. For months, I have lingered in its folds, feeling for the intangible, brushing against its edges without grasping it.

Digital Matter

At my desk, the hyphen compels me to act. I sift through recordings, fragments of sound and memory. Birdsong from Norfolk—sent across the Atlantic to my sister as became a knot dissolving distance. The birds sang to her and through her, their voices carrying the place I wished her to inhabit. These recordings now intertwine memory, presence, and absence, the hyphen becoming a lifeline, a space of holding.

The Knot’s Grip

There is no escape. The hyphen gnaws, demanding exposure. This is not evolution but mutation, a wound refusing to close. The work spirals into spaces of terror and potential, tearing itself free, resisting containment. It demands collision, transformation. To knot sound is to confront the in-between, where nothing holds but everything trembles. The hyphen is not a mark but a tear, a bridge, a scream.

March 2023

Planes of no(n)sense is a knotting of thoughts and the unthought that manifested as an evolving form. The expression, the expressed and the sensed become a mass of singularities entangled while making… an act of doing, touching and sensing. Planes of no(n)sense is a knotwork, a multi-dimensional entity created within the flow of an evolving space as one surface melded into another.

Folding the paper enabled me to change its cartography as the lines of thought passed between me and the form via my fingers. Fold after fold, the creases developed new lines of thought, which have evolved through the process of making.

March 2023

Plane of no sense (I-V) materialised when words made no sense. In Logic of Sense (2015), Gilles Deleuze speaks of no(n)sense as the underlying basis of sense and being. Nonsense and sense co-exist. Sense is a multifaceted entity and often the product of inter-related things.

Inter-related because, beyond my control, each plane of no sense found its own space on the surface I was working on.

February 2023

Emerging Thoughts appear to be a mapping of the unknown. In the process of mark-making, one semi-transparent image, a thought, merges with the other. Something different is formed as the relationship between maker and material evolves within an environment in flux. When materials are folded together, the fields of art practice, new materialism and posthuman feminism appear to produce fertile ground for new knowledge to emerge.

September 2022

To Re-turn to the knot is a process of looking at something anew. In 2018 working with a beaten-up Landrover, the vehicle and I spent much of the summer making cartographic drawings of the landscape close to where we were based. Four years on, we worked together again in a different location.

I wanted to record the rhythm of my surroundings. Aware this was a different knotwork capturing forces and energy from the environment… an ‘attempt to render visible forces that are not themselves visible’ (Deleuze, 2005).

March 2023

Gathering Threads is part of the knotwork of 31/10/2012-21 (2021), a knot of digital layers touch forming complex textures as audio and video entangle. This section has a roughness of texture, as a reading of Virginia Woolf’s short story The String Quartet crashes into the shipping forecast, as light patterns and images diffract over a German reading of Franz Kafka’s The Cares of a Family Man, while I explain the concept of Odradek to my therapist, and short bursts of birdsong punctuate a virtual landscape. Intensity and chaos reign. Yet when making the piece, the different strands of video and audio seemed to find their natural folds as they cut together. Perhaps, as Deleuze suggests, it is at its limit that texture becomes most evident as folds evolve and different planes/patterns emerge. These patterns seem to hold the sensual within the knotwork of 31/10/2012-21 (2021).

The search for the sensual is an essential consideration I think of the new and that it may only be discovered at the point of chaos within my practice.

August 2023

When the zoe/geo/techno knot a different knotwork is formed.

Here, I didn’t want to knot images. They are for the listener to envisage and for the watcher to make their own.

Braidotti speaks of a zoe/geo/techno assemblage and as a maker, each knot forms the beginning of a knotwork every time. Zoe is a life, a body, my hands that tie the knot, my body and mind that senses and thinks through the making process. The knot has a topology which is the geo, the terrain and topos which is the territory, the space in which the knotworks are formed. The knot is only a knot if the technology of making is involved. As I make and work with materials, there is an entanglement, of mind and matter, an understanding of the thread, the loop, the fold which forms the knot. There is always a techné present, a method of making and an instrument to form the knot. The zoe/geo/techno is a knot. The zoe/geo/techno assemblage from Braidotti is not just a conceptual assemblage of three words connected with dashes. It is an entangled, a knot, or perhaps even a knotwork. No work. Life and living.

My practice is concerned with knotting. Knotting is process. The way I understand the knot is not as an object, but as a method and a methodology. Here the knot is knotting. The knot is a specific way of navigating the terrain of practice and the relation of theory and practice, knotting the two together to make three, maybe more, without boundaries. The knot is a methodology that allows for complexity and allows for a non-binary engagement with practice.

A binary engagement sees practice and theory as two separate entities, the making and thinking fused together as a piece, sometimes an artwork. It sees thinking and making as separate entities, a cartesian form. This research is not cartesian. It entangles with the unseen. This process is about what lies within and beyond the knot.

 Beyond cartesian boundaries, the knot proposes a space/place of complexity where everything is entangled. The sensual, conceptual and socio-political entangle. That is present act, and the action of knotting which brings together the physical, conceptual, body, the organic, and the technological.

The zoe/geo/techno is present in the knot. Braidotti practice is writing/thinking, social engagement and activism. I want to uncover, make visible the zoe/geo/techno in artistic practice through knotting and the knot through the practice of making.

I make as I write.

April 2022

It takes 45 minutes of twisting and turning down a bumpy single track to arrive at Loch Hourn. On a clear day, you can see the Isle of Skye at the head of the loch. Pivot south, and the landscape appears marked by geographical folds, with the occasional artificial scar of a road or path. Curious about the tracks and traces, I followed them for several days before putting pen to paper. The process was spontaneous. I traced the tracks with my eyes, making staccato-like movements. I made marks on the paper in response to the rhythm of the landscape. For some unknown reason, it was important that the marks were indelible and formed, almost without thinking. Over three days, a series of marks materialised.

Back in Yorkshire, unable to remember the original orientation of the drawings, I placed them next to each other. A rhizomatic flow developed from a seemingly chaotic sequence of similar but different forms as they found their rhythm and a new cartography. The geographical tracks and traces transformed and created a script, a language without formal grammar or punctuation that refused to fulfil the demands of any dominant codified language structure immediately translatable by the human eye.

2021

31/10/2012-21 explores shifting cartographies and folds between land, mind, and language. The piece emerged from my attempts to articulate how epistēmē (knowledge) and tekhnē (craft) entangle within my practice. In a moment of creative tension, with the shipping forecast murmuring in the background, I began to weave together the strands of thoughts, sounds and images, late into the night.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, we live within a "body without organs*"—a sensual, fluid existence shaped by uncontrollable forces. For me, the coast, especially a stretch of Norfolk beach, became a place I returned to, engaging with the rhythms of the sea, tasting, touching, and smelling the shifting elements.

This act of re-turning mirrors the artist's ongoing process. It is the core of my practice—the constant looping and repetition that drives my making, writing, thinking, and becoming. It’s a cyclical engagement with material, a continuous labour of creation. This process is both an act of research and a labour in itself. Writing becomes a physical act, ebbing and flowing like the tides, each sentence forming through the rhythm of thought and movement. The fractured process of creation mirrors the mind’s wandering, following references and connections that emerge in unexpected ways.

Like writing, making with physical materials requires a similar re-turning—a reshaping and reforming as I work with and through the material. For me, this creative labour is a form of production, as Marx described: material and labour are intertwined. As I work, elements of thought and substance entangle, influencing one another in a dynamic interplay.

In this process, thought and material are inseparable. The labour of making becomes a space where the conscious and the unconscious, the physical and the abstract, converge into new forms of creation. While Hegelian thought might argue that consciousness shapes reality, I follow Marx’s emphasis on the physicality of labour. In my practice, I embrace both—the tangible work of making and the deeper, intangible forces that shape the creative process. This entanglement of thought, material, and labour is where true creation happens.

(Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. and Massumi, B. (2013). A Thousand Plateaus*. London: Bloomsbury, p.183.)

2021

June 2021

It was a dry day

tracing non-human paths

one world dissolved into another

and there was Slippage

I travelled to the North York Moors for the first time just over a year ago. It was a new landscape for me. Crossing the moorland I followed a human trace that wove towards the sea. Around midway, a plateau appeared where sheep gathered. I stopped to look. Seconds later, I could see a meshwork of lines crossing the landscape. Curious about these etched tracks and traces, I followed them.

Tracing the borders within this landscape, I followed the natural boundaries formed by vegetation and kept to the tracks formed by the feet of non-human forms.

Deleuze and Guattari speak of an approach to creating concepts that favour space, geography and philosophy - nomadism. Perhaps Slippage parallels a plane of immanence with many becomings, a knot of becomings. Indeed, Slippage evolves from an environment in which many happenings have already happened… and continue to unfold.

Slippage materialised in the editing process. Something happened as the data was being processed. It slipped, and a different place/space appeared. Momentarily the slippage was disorientating, yet not disturbing. It shifted my perspective as old boundaries dissolved. Beyond my control, an assemblage of different environments evolved, where sound, image and time knotted together as part of my ongoing process.

The virtual algorithmic space was out of my control, as the data broke its boundaries. The doing became nomadic. Slippage escaped the power of the here and now and the need to conform.

Perhaps this immanent space is a plane without borders where there is no object nor subject, and everything is becoming-posthuman, becoming-virtual.

June 2021

Moor Slippage occurred during the editing process. Slippage (2021) had already manifested. This footage was the second example of the data slipping while being processed. I slipped into a space where time, sound and image dissolved into something else. As a viewer, I was taken through an internal visceral space of folds and knots. The sound became a distorted rhythm of clicks and the occasional bird call - fold upon fold, revealing a different plane for investigation.

And then, as I slipped into another world, I was within a brain-scape passing between the neuronal cells, which, I am told grow out of dendrites to reach other cells.

In September 2020, during the global lockdown, we moved into a house that required extensive renovation. Within the context of my PhD, this transition seemed to align with the nature of my research. The house became a living, breathing apparatus – a site of experimentation and process, composed of many rooms, like caverns within a larger cavern. Here, matter, both human and non-human, alongside light and the infrastructure of the house, emerged as active participants in my research and creative practice. The house functioned as an apparatus, understood through Karen Barad’s (2007) framework as “open-ended dynamic material-discursive practices, through which specific ‘concepts’ and things are articulated” (p. 334).

Within this apparatus, I observed the dynamic interplay of light as it reconfigured itself in the space. Intangible light waves collided, interacted, and dissipated upon the walls, producing ephemeral phenomena that transformed, danced, and ultimately vanished – a fleeting performance, marking the continual interplay between materiality, perception, and transformation within this lived site of inquiry.

Inhabited Phenomena (2020), and the videos 14 50 04 and 14 50 08 (2020) capture the interplay of light within this apparatus.

2021

I wanted to say that I did not know what this piece was about. It is a thing. The form evolved from the non-conscious—an exorcism of place, space and memories. The ghost is still in the room; however, it has now morphed into something else. It remains a visceral skin, a meshwork as Tim Ingold would see it, or even a knotwork, as a term borrowed from Thomas Nail.

My search is beyond the visible to explore what is held within the invisible. What knots these threads together and gives space for the material to continue to breathe?

Within it feels claustrophobic, yet there are holes within the form. As I move deeper into the form I wonder what I am looking for.

April 2021

you are process

turned

wound and looped

you are me and

I

you

entangled

there is no me

and no you

me-you-we

can not escape each other

me-you-we grew

together

we entwine and become

one

no subject

no object within a space

the apparatus that is

life

process

the knot

to choose a thread

is like choosing

a lover

do you ever choose

a lover

me-you-we found

one and other

one loop attached itself to another and

form evolved

but it had no form

no structure

you fell to the ground

lifeless

you weren’t ever going to be able

to hold yourself

then you wound

into

another form

with ease the second you

slipped through the loops

and formed something different

something new

the mindscape changed

the scape re-formed

yet you needed more

yet there was something missing

To turn/To wind/to Loop, (2021), is a meshwork formed of many knots created from two threads. Thin wire and paper intersects as knots evolve within this continuous form. The planes as singularities inhabit a transcendental field. Events, intensities and striations converge to create different planes from another world. These worlds are real within my mind.

Perhaps this piece is a series of worlds that resonate with one another.

Initially, I was intrigued by the plane because of its flexibility.

Hang the meshwork on a single pin at three different intersections within the structure, and three feminine forms presented themselves. I had no intention of creating anything representational while working with this paper and wire.

Before me, I had a form with plasticity. I focused on the turns, winds, and loops when analysing the piece. I had worked with the materials before and made other topological forms. This time the paper, wire and maker become one. There is no me and it. We are one, and there is no escape from each other. No subject, no object within a space, the apparatus that is life, process.

The intensity grows as a repetitive process as one thread, process, life and memories are pulled through and entwine with another to form a more extensive plane, a different topology, a meshwork as Tim Ingold would see it.

March 2021

March 2021

March 2021

January 2021

Sept - Dec 2020

Phenomena inhabit this space

Nov 2020

This research focuses on matter and diffractive patterns in time and space. My search is constantly for ‘things’, that are not objects in places/spaces where the subject has no control over the image. By control I mean, the practitioner is not the subject setting up the image, thereby making the image the object. I am working beyond the binary, looking for examples of diffraction patterns that occur naturally. The pieces draw on natural light, where photons as unseen matter form diffractive phenomenon without human intervention.

Within this series, there are five images along with four videos, recorded from 14 40 08 - 15 00 03. The photos are static images and therefore, do not fully capture the complete essence of this research. Why, do I feel this? Because it is important, for me at present, that the diffractive patterns are in flux. Moreover, that time, space and matter merge into one. The still images feel like they conflict with this notion; however, they do capture a fraction of a second of time passing and a diffractive happening where photons of light have passed through a window and hit or been absorbed into the surface of a wall.

A previous work from the ‘Beyond Zero and One’ series sat next to the diffractive pattern I was capturing. Intrigued by the merging of the two pieces, I have included the images in this series. I have to analyse this entangling of research and works further.

Nov 2020

The first of four recordings captured during 14 50 08 - 15 00 03. I had been looking within my environment for weeks, and I had seen nothing. Nothing because I was looking for something particular. Something that I had no control over. I had to look, to watch and to be patient for the event to happen.

Then, (this is the extract from my journal) - This afternoon I was going into the living room and on the wall was the first diffractive pattern I have seen in this house. I have spotted reflection, which I am not interested in, but here was a diffractive pattern. It came through the window on the west side of the house as the sun was setting. The wind is still today, so the movement within the diffraction is slight. As I was filming, I could see movement - a repetitive rhythm caused by me breathing. The phone within my hands moved as my lungs inhaled and exhaled.

Over the past week, I have considered how to capture diffractive films without taking control of it. Importantly, I wanted the pattern to show me the length of the piece. I watched for the change in light and the length in time I could hold the phone still, without my rhythm interfering with the recording. In retrospect, I now think my rhythm and that of the diffractive pattern are one thing. This is melded with the white noise of the dehumidifier sucking the invisible water droplets/matter out of the atmosphere.

As much as possible, I am trying not to become physically involved in the events that I am filming. I am looking for the events to be natural occurrences, things I capture by chance. Being in the right place/space at the right time, this development in my practice is about looking and not trying to influence.

Visually I was entranced by the entangled mass on the wall. How do the photons form a pattern that appears as a 3d structure? Is this a thing without being an object - a phenomenon that is possibly a breaking of binaries?

Diffraction rather than representation. Diffraction looks at patterns, waves within and as part of the system. Representation is mirroring, and there is no benefit of mirroring - it is the ultimate dualism. Reflecting on and thinking about a mirror reflecting the subject to make the subject into the object is a bizarre juncture to this discursive line of thought. For a mirror to be of any benefit, from a purely human point of view, it has to be the object. As the apparatus, the mirror is the catalyst for the subject to be reflected in as the object. The being/thing makes itself the object, and the reflection is then the subject in question. Within the object, the mirror, the subject becomes the object that is beyond touch. The subject now turned object is unable to intra-act with or touch itself caught within the object. For the subject to have a diffractive occurrence with the object, there has to be intra-action. An entangling of the subject and the object must occur. They must become one and of equal status. There is no hierarchy in an intra-action. The subject becomes part, is part, and one with the object; there is no separation. As Barad points out, ‘It is not a self-referential glance back at oneself’ (Barad, 2007, p.88), this relationship is performative and an intra-active work. The object and the subject do not preexist; the work emerges through the intra-action. There is a discursive inter-relationship with the phenomena and the maker/recorder during the happening.

K. Barad. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway - Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London & Durham, Duke University Press.

Nov 2020

Is one minute and five seconds in length.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I am having an internal battle with you, the viewer. To expect the viewer to watch, something inside of me is saying I must entertain. I am fearful the viewer will say nothing happened - but it did. These films are not necessarily for anyone but me. I want the pieces to be thought-provoking, not entertaining. Now I sound like an obnoxious arse; someone stuck in an ivory tower. I do not want to play games with the viewer. Why am I making these pieces? They are my research.

Once, I would have considered them as artworks. Now, it is different; they are not artworks. They are pieces that are visual confrontations that challenge the ethics of my research and practice. Primarily, these happenings are for me. As Karen Barad points out, realism - ‘is not about representations of an independent reality but about the real consequences, interventions, creative possibilities, and responsibilities of an intra-acting within and as part of the world (Barad, 2007, p.37). Furthermore, they are visualisations/experiments in the loosest sense of the word.

The phone and the maker (in both instances, recorders), are the apparatuses within the event. The problem here is that one recorder becomes the subject, and the other the technology capturing the image on the wall. The image becomes the object, even though it is not a permanent thing. There are at least a couple of things happening here. A conceptual and material encounter. The conceptual, the continued fight with dialectics and the binary, in parallel with the nature-culture dichotomy.

This is the practitioner’s primary confrontation. Why use the word confrontation? Because the happening is a conceptual and a material confrontation for the practitioner, bringing methodology into question. With no desire for this research to be representational or reflexive, the recorder turns to Barad and cites - ‘reflexivity aims to acknowledge the tripartite arrangement between objects, representations, and knowers that produces knowledge, as opposed to less-reflexive modes of investigation that leave the knower out of the equation, focusing attention narrowly on the relationship between the objects and their representations’ (Barad, 2007, p.86). Aware that reflexivity is drawn from representationalism, the recorder/practitioner does not wish to reflect on this happening. Here is a visualisation of photons; they have no visible form as they move through the atmosphere. Only when the photons hit the surface of the wall, the diffractive pattern forms a thing. The recorder then examines, analyses and observes what is happening.

These happenings are pieces and found, not set-up experiments. They are events that manifest and advance my research.

K. Barad. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway - Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. London & Durham, Duke University Press.

Nov 2020

This film is troubling to me because its source is an object. The shadow is formed from a sculpture from the Zero and One series. It has merged into the diffractive pattern that has all but disappeared at this moment in time. The sculpture is now blocking the photons that had been streaming through the window, unable to hit the wall, a darker shade of grey appears. Through the illusion of light and less light, the shadow seemingly hits a thin pulsating veil and pierces into the wall. However, no ‘thing’ is there. Is this a phenomenon of space, time and matter happening?

Nov 2020

Marked the end of a period in time, space and matter. The shadows moved to centre stage and became the focal point of this entangled world of nature and techno-culture. The films remained without objects, and the recorder/practitioner met with the phenomena of the diffractive patterns and light, as revealed. The human and the natural world merged with the digital.

Following Karen Barad, I am ‘Moving away from the representationalist trap of geometrical optics, I shift the focus to physical optics, to questions of diffraction rather than reflection’. (Barad, 2003)

An intensity of light, photons, had passed through the panes of glass allowed for these phenomena to happen. There was nothing the recorder, human or machine, could do to control the capturing of these happenings. The diffractive patterns occurred within nature‘s limitless boundaries of time-space-mattering and revealed an entanglement of matter and meaning within time. At this point, the videos call for a non-dualistic onto-epistemology rethinking of time, space and matter. The practitioner/recorder does not want to pin the pieces down to exist as physical things in space/place at any particular time. These intra-actions now occurs via the web, and it is for the virtual world to reveal these happenings where matter as a dynamic non-object exists. These happenings could be from the past, present and future. Here time, space and matter are in flux and the boundaries of ‘things’ dissolve delineating no fixed subject or object. The happenings are dynamic intra-active productions where the recorder has no desire for any hierarchical boundaries and exclusions (Dolphijn and van der Tuin, 2012).

Barad, K., (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 801-831. DOI: 0097-9740/2003/2803-0006.

Dolphijn, R. and van der Tuin, I., (2012). New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, pp.67-68.

2020

This series of sculptures push me to consider matter and beyond the visible. From the Skin Series, Skin I is a continuation of my exploration of the materiality of intangible matter.

Skin I explores a unique topology of a body, distinct from human form. This creation emerged from deep within my mind, shaped by unconscious thoughts of forms, empty spaces, and what lies beyond the void after the death of a soulmate.

The Process: Skin I is formed from two pieces. The top section is a network of stitches made from raw silk thread. Knitted on a small gauge circular needle, it quickly developed a funnel-like structure of tightly controlled stitches. Mentally and physically, the tension within the piece was too much and had to be broken. I knew if I dropped stitches at random points around the neck of the pieces, ladders would form, and the rigidity of the structure would be broken. Decreasing the stitches at the base of the cylinder and enlarging them changed the piece’s rhythm.

The main body of the second section evolved from a 1.5-metre chain of loops formed from white linen paper yarn. Crocheted loops form the backbone of the sculpture, and the plane of repeated loops flow into a cylindrical shape. The main body of the sculpture materialises into a loose form that opens up into a topological plane. The repeated loops within this area are of similar size, not done intentionally; it happened in the making process. When hung the plane, midway down, the sculpture reveals a wavelike form. I had no control over the forming of the wave. Yes, I made the loops; however, I didn’t realise how the sculpture would hold its shape when hung. The structure has formed no matter how I stretch and pull the piece. When left to its device, it reverts into the wavelike plane. The structure forms into a rough cylinder at the base of the work before hitting the floor.

The raw silk element of the sculpture doesn’t hold its form, which bothers me. I want the ladders within the cylinder to be seen, and this isn’t possible unless there is a thick paper yarn threaded around the top of the cylinder. I now have a dilemma. The paper yarn has its own materiality and is forming an irregular shape, and I don’t know if it is the right shape, whatever the right shape is. I struggled mentally and physically with this sculpture for a while. The two pieces weren’t connecting, but I knew they had a connection. It wasn’t until I hung the raw silk section and then started to join the length of crocheted linen paper yarn onto the neck of the raw silk cylinder that the piece became one.

Analysis of Piece: A skin is a topological framework of cells. One cell is knitted to another to form a plane, a topological architectural structure. Skin I hangs like a cadaver. I think inescapable subconscious thoughts are running through this piece. Why do my subconscious thoughts and the materiality of the matter I am working with entwine? What happens when the haptic and the subconscious collide? What is the matter of this sculpture showing me? What is the unseen matter telling me? Why does matter matter at a site of material encounter?

Materials: White linen paper yarn, white raw silk thread and white thick twisted paper yarn

Method: Crochet and knitting

Structure: One-piece

Dimensions: length: 270cm x width: 23cm x depth: 23cm

Made: February 2020

2020

The backbone of the piece is formed from one single strand of crocheted white linen yarn. The loops configure a repeated pattern from the single strand that evolves to create a topological plane. This pattern flows from the top to the bottom of the piece. Without thinking, I loop one loop to another, switching directions with the thread, curious what it would do in response. Before long, a dynamic wavelike structure appears. The linen paper yarn twisted and turned, the surface of the material began to undulate, and without joining one side of the piece to the other, a shallow 3D sculpture formed. The white linen paper yarn holds form; however, it looks flat. It needed something else.

Looking back at Skin I, the thick white twisted paper yarn at the neck of the structure holds its form. Is that what this structure needs? The paper yarn will give the sculpture another dimension. I take the ball of paper yarn and thread it through the loops of linen paper structure. This paper yarn has a mind of its own. It twists and turns, holding its form, sure of its vitality. When it turns, I thread the yarn through the crocheted loops, taking it from the top to the bottom of the structure. To end, I place the ball of paper yarn within two loops of the linen structure. Without the paper yarn, this structure was lacking vitally and was dead. Perhaps it is supposed to be. No, I don’t want it to be dead. It needs to be alive. The piece required a second element, as the original work felt incomplete. It’s strange how one unruly ball of paper thread can change the dynamics of a structure. Within the form, the relationship between the line and surface of the piece as the body's contours dissolve.

Analysis of Piece: Skin II feels like a dried sheet of skin. The sculpture is moving away from the human and towards the nonhuman. It has a visible backbone. However, the paper yarn is the key to the life within this piece. It runs through the piece like a volt of electricity. It adds vitality to the work. At the bottom of the sculpture, the ball of paper yarn original hung bound by two threads from the linen form. Now the paper yarn has broken free and lays unravelled on the floor.

Materials: White linen paper yarn and thick white twisted paper yarn

Method: Crochet

Structure: Plane of white linen paper yarn with white paper yarn threaded through the loops of linen form

Dimensions: length: 270cm x width: 23cm x depth: 23cm

Made: April 2020

2020

Why did the material change from paper and linen thread to wire? Here is an incision into width and light. The colour has gone, yet there is life. Contours, an outline, delineate a being that was once there and no longer is. A ghost of a trace, a taxonomy of lines is all that remains. A thread that entangles with others and is suspended in space to give the illusion of a three-dimensional form. The tangible form is now carbon sitting in a box.

March 2020

A light happening I am unable to explain. Where do these patterns come from, and where are they taking me? I was sitting at my desk writing when I looked over my shoulder to find this event happening behind me. I became entangled in the event. A diffractive world was forming beyond human control through the magic of the physics of light. The material had agency.

2019

Beyond the Void evolved while I was thinking about nothing and sensing everything. On the surface, it is a piece that considers traditional crafts as a pathway to artistic expression. I free-formed the sculpture using familiar techniques of crocheting and knitting. The material determined the shape of the structure. This piece considers what is beyond the visual, and what is in the void.

This structure was formed with the collaboration of a crochet hook, a circular knitting needle, thread and me, as the maker. When casting on, to knit or crochet, I don’t know how many stitches or loops I am going to have to start the piece. A single thread twists into a line of stitches to form the beginning of the structure. On the circular needle, the piece quickly begins to grow. (I only use the knit stitch.) The repetition of the stitch forms a network of loops. The piece grows, and I become trapped within the repetitive cycle of entwining one stitch after another. This process quickly forms a cylinder shape. The structure became tight, stifling and the urge to break the rhythm entered my mind. It can’t go on… I drop a stitch, or add one, to break the rhythm and change the form. Dropping a stitch brings the greatest release. Pull down on the threads and all hell lets loose as the piece unravels and a ladder forms. The rhythm is broken, and I am free. The subject/object relationship is broken and the structure reveals its own being, I lose control. Now I am collaborating with matter.

The inner section of Beyond the Void was formed first. I let it grow. I hung the inner section of the sculpture and left it, before working on what is now the outer skin. As I start the second structure, without any control, the knitting turns in on itself, an ellipse forms in error, by mistake, (however I don’t believe there are mistakes in this form). Mistakes/glitches, I believe they are the form finding its own materiality. This piece will eventually form the top section of the structure. The process of forming the structure isn’t as simple as starting from the top of the piece and working down to the bottom. Often the middle section will be knitted first and crochet added to either end. There is no set pattern. This process is freeform. The knotting and looping of the crochet are less controlled and allow for the thread to make a looser form. The making stops when the thread ran out. This is not to say the piece is finished. A piece is never finished it is part of the process. (I don’t believe any form is finished. It is left, and the maker moves on to another thing, another encounter with matter.)

Material: Coral and tan raffia

Method: Crochet and knitting

Structure: Two entwined hanging form

Dimensions: length: 254cm x width: 22cm x depth: 17cm

Made: Summer/Autumn 2019

At this point we were all breathing. We were at home in Denver. With nothing and everything to do I waited and watched. I didn't know what was going to happen next. It was midsummer, the garden was full of berries, and they became my source of ink. I gathered a handful and carefully crashed them until they produced a blood-like liquid.

Without a care, in the garden I played with the berries, not knowing that a month later only two of us would be breatihing.

No Objects - No Control. A experimentation with sound and no objects.

Zero and One + One. This series of photographs captures the materiality of rhythm, time and light, while investigating ‘the real’ in a time when everything is constantly changing.

2018/19

I am immersed in matter when I walk down to the beach. This ongoing series of drawings capture my world's materiality and rhythm in lines.

These marks are a discordant memory of space. The rhythm of the rocks entangles materials. The language of mark-making goes beyond the representational, and recording of the place. I have no interest in the representational; I aim to sense the multiplicity of space.

Drawing with my left hand frees me from my dominant right; I did not want control. The nonconscious marks follow the natural flow of space. We became one during the act of putting pen to paper. The lines diffracted from a single point within the landscape. All other lines of intra-act. Sandstone, salt and water merged with pen and paper as I followed the striations of the rocks. A synaesthetic experience of materials, as human and non-human merged into one.

Beyond Zero and One is a series of sculptures capture duration and matter as a method of communication. Here natural forces fashion one element of the sculpture and my hands fashion the other, materials and artifacts combine reproducing the conditions of everyday life.

August - September 2018

Anise Gallery, London.

To reconfigure is to figure again. To contemplate the displacement once again, and to realise perhaps there is more control in the re-making.

Selected to be part of a group show following my graduation for Central Saint Martins UAL in June 2018.

May 2018

Displacement Activity/No Control hangs from a steel rig. Twenty-four strands of knotted and looped wire hang in front of six ink line drawings. The sculptures hold my material internal data beyond the vocal and written. The strands of wire and the repetitive marks of the ink drawings portray perpetual rhythms during the process of making this installation. I aimed to capture and visualise the rhythm of the non-male artist while stepping beyond the representational.

While making this installation, I realised the limitations of the patriarchal language structure. As a non-male artist, I had to find a new language, one that was my own, conveying an internal rhythmic language that ebbs and flows alongside daily external rhythms. I wanted a language to portray my non-binary being from within me. My language emerged intuitively through my practice. The line has become my mark, embracing my recurring rhythms. The lengths of wire and repetitive marks are seemingly the same, but always different exploring language and revealing my being.

When capturing rhythm within Displacement Activity/No Control, I used a method where I had little control. I shaped the wire with my hands. Although this was a dexterous task, I wanted to detach my mental being from the making process, to let my inner being flow through my hands to form sculptures while embracing the glitch. I wanted to lose control and create structures putting myself in another place/space where I would find new rhythms. The loss of control and stream of consciousness within Displacement Activity/No Control excites me most as a maker/sculptor.

The viewer is caught in an in-between space/place within the installation, peering through the wire strands to view the drawings. Finding it difficult to focus on both elements of the installation, the viewer loses control and embraces the new.

Blue Structures focused on the process of making forms intuitively. I was initially drawn to the tension held within the sculptures when they were pulled taut. These sculptures flow from me. Nets are for catching things and can also be for protection. The cages/traps have develop and now have escape routes. The nets are formed as tunnels. They could be seen as coming from my chora. They are a gateway to freedom.

This sculpture was a piece I needed to make before I made Displacement Activity/No Control. It is over 2.5m long and crocheted from wire. I wanted to understand the limitation of the material I was working with while forming a structure from a repeat pattern.

This installation took place at Tate Modern in January 2018. I encouraged the audience to have a conversation with sound. Working with the wind quartet, Block4, I was curious to see how the public would respond, by mark marking, to a short piece of modern classical music.

As the quartet played, the participants drew. On completion of the drawings each member of the quartet chose an image and responded to it, and in return the participants responded to the quartet, thus creating a conversation with sound and a subsequent artwork.

I was drawn to the rhythm of the waves of colour while I edited these three short videos. The original footage faded into the void as I was entranced by the colours.

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You No Speak was made while I was struggling to work with language in the written form. I stitched one garment and then made the other. It was important to me that the garments were the same but different. For me a stream of subconscious thoughts and language flows from one piece to the other. A perpetual cycle of language and rhythm.

Both garments are captive and lifeless; one caught on a rusted hook, the other lays bound by a cord, perhaps mirroring being caught within a suffocating patriarchal structure. Seemingly one has power over the other. Or perhaps the piece reflects my feelings as I search for a place/space where there is no masculine or feminine struggle for power over language and I am outside of the binary. There was a release in making You No Speak.

September 2017, a group of us from Central Saint Martins did a return journey to Southend on Sea in a Red Master bus from Kings Cross, London. I wanted to make a piece of work were I wasn’t in control. I wanted the machine to have complete control. I let the bus record the journey and make the work for me. I constructed a mechanism using a piece of string, a red pen and a piece of paper. The concept of creating artworks without being in total control intrigues me as I pass the making over to the rhythm and the motion of the bus, I was curious to go with the flow of the loss of control within my practice.

June 2017

I was invited to participate in Multiplication of Rhythm, a week-long workshop in Peckham, London. As a group of eight artists, we collected sounds from the local area and made our own response to the location. A sound artist within the group compiled the final soundtrack. As the evening developed the public was encouraged to respond to the soundtrack using ultraviolet pens on panels of paper that covered the walls of our space.

The following day the sheets of paper were used by the artist, Katrin Elmer, to form sculptures.

It was exciting to see the concept of my installation work pushed in another direction during this residency.

January 2017

The line has become prominent within my practice and presents itself in various forms.

It was during a concert in November 2016 I heard a contemporary classical piece of music by Laurence Osborn, played by the Outcry Ensemble. I started to draw the piece of music in my sketchbook. Inspired by the contemporary work I was curious to see how others visualise the piece. In January 2017 I was given an opportunity to install Drawing Music. The Outcry Ensemble performed two short pieces and the audience simultaneously drew a line using an UV pen, expressing their response to what they were hearing. The results were truly amazing.

2017

2017

Formed from bin liners Black Structure evolved into a hyperbolic structure. It originated from deep within me.

2017

Hyperbolic structures and traditional craft methods form the backbone of this piece. I wanted to work with a mathematical/science based structure and textiles in my practice. Influenced by Louise Bourgeois I created an organic structure that reflected me and my origins. The work of Professor Daina Taimina, a mathematician, who lectures on hyperbolic space and its connections with nature led me to probe deeper into crocheting this structure within this installation.

2017

My World started with a single hairball. It holds my DNA, it is part of me. On closer examination I realised the hairball was the key to unlock the door into my world.

This installation evolved from the hairball and a tangled rope I found on a beach in Norfolk. I live by the sea in Norfolk and on the water in London, this is my world. My world is a place/space that is often riven in two. Leading from two hairballs two trails flow. Both are formed from manmade waste and organic materials; however one was formed by the forces of nature and the other by me.

By bringing the strands into a gallery space I wanted the viewer to step into My World and to touch, smell and taste the salt in the air released from the sculptures.

2017

Wrapped in Red is an ongoing project based in a small wood. It was started in the Spring of 2017. I wanted to use materials that were easy to form and to use methods traditionally seen as the craft skills associated with women. Eve Hesse and Louise Bourgeois both used crafts methods within their practices and through their works explored their subconscious being.

The strand of wool is a line, a lifeline, an umbilical cord that attaches me to the past and to the future as I continue to identify language and ‘being’ a non-male as key factors within my practice. I wanted to create a work that would weather and be sustainable and organic, breaking the boundaries of nature-culture.