My blog page, here you will find more information of my everyday art practice. sketches of works, ideas, performance, photography and much more.
new photographic works Corroding Towards Dusk, exhibited at Cartwright Hall Bradford.
My first pair of Dr Martin boots are currently being exhibited at Cartwright Hall in Bradford. Below is the information that is being shown with the boots on way I chose to show them and why they are important to me.
“I grew up in Bradford left school at 16 and from my Photography Youth Training Scheme first payment, I bought a pair of Cherry Doc Martin Boots. I could now walk the streets in Dyke style.”
Why these boots are important to me.
I keep my own archive including my Doc marten boots, photographs, letters and personal items because as an artist I
work from personal experience. I collect as part of my experience and have used these objects and items in
performance and installation. I make personal work as a lesbian and Queer artist as a means to explore and
understand my own identity and because I do not see myself reflected in art history. Queer people have to
document and share our own stories and histories, we have to create something from nothing in a hetero-normative
society that doesn’t understand who we are. I have always worked as an artist as a necessity and have been part of
DIY movements to make things happen. My life has been my material - and I believe in the personal as political. As
an artist, musician and performer I have been part of DIY Queer and Dyke scenes where we create our own culture.
These boots were the first time I followed my own path- they represent nonconformity. This started for me in
Bradford and these boots are intrinsic to my butch identity.
I bought these boots and the first day I wore them I had to take them off as they were rubbing the back of my ankle.
For days, my ankle was sore and bleeding. But I had to go through the pain for these boots to fit me perfect.
Living in Bradford
I lived in a bedsit on Marlborough rd. Manningham Bradford where I would play my smiths records and head out to
the spotted house pub on Keighley road near the corner of Lister park. The Spotted house was once known as Listers
arms and owned by the Lister family. The Pub had two rooms when you entered, the room on the left was for the
local beer drinkers but the room on the right on a Saturday night belonged to the punks, goths and the queers of
Bradford. Here I met my first girlfriend Allison while dancing to THE THE uncertain smile.
Performance HOME Manchester
thanks to Jamie Allan for taking these photographs for HOMEmcr of The Performance Anti Monument with myself and artist Rosanne Robertson.
Instigate Arts presents a night of creative and artistic Do it Yourself, bringing together Manchester and Salford’s cutting edge, innovative and leftfield creatives, collaborators, collectives and spaces. For De(Construction) artist directors of The Penthouse Debbie Sharp and Rosanne Robertson present a reverse sculpture that pairs raw materials of construction and the performance of destruction - reducing old hierarchical individualistic monumentalism to the communal experience of dust. Over the past 5 years The Penthouse was born of and incubated by a piece of crumbling modernist architecture, we cooperated and revolted within its dust which we believe still resides within our bodies. Indeterminacy, ephemerality and moments happened within the dust of a previous era with cranes bringing the dreams attached to new concrete blocks all around us. Boundaries between our bodies, structures, vibrations were destabilised. The Queer female body within crumbling modernist structure has been an important yet non-formalised part of the experience with both artists exploring structure and the city on their own terms and inviting other artists to do the same. The Dyke body forcing the destruction of built up Penthouse dreams and agitating ideals for an advanced and sleek future brings into force an 'Other' power. This power is more attuned to Mother nature who has the force to engulf all into the sediment layers of the Earth. The boundaries of the artists' bodies and the materials of the spaces in which their practices exist renegotiated- De(Constructed) within a live performance. This act is reflective of the ongoing cycle of creation and destruction within DIY and artist led culture- creating a space for freedom. Streamed live from HOME 18/01/2018