Being

Being

2025, Vane Gallery, Gateshead

A duo-show with Ali Cook, the exhibition explores the figure as a carrier of transgressive narratives. In the exhibition, my work explored how familial bonds are formed beyond the materials and myths of blood and DNA. I utilise moments and materials from the everyday to focus upon the way bodies transfer and share information, emotions, feelings and histories. I am interested in finding ways to make visible the ways lesbians and queer people produce babies and make families.

The work is drawn from inks, charcoals and stains that I make herself out of stuff collected from my intimate environment such as plant matter, soil and scrap metal. I use the ingredients of these inks as the starting point for conversations with other ‘beyond-blood’ parents about family and kinship. These conversations are translated into large-scale drawings, short films and poetic texts.

Drawn from the landscape and containing a landscape to draw from, they are subject to the sun and air; they are in a constant state of change; oxidising and fading, they will deepen and sadden with their own salt and iron and with time

https://www.vane.org.uk/exhibitions/being

photos: Colin Davidson

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