July 2018 has been an incredibly busy month, running activities as part of my solo show at Photofusion, but also teaching my regular courses at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

This month I’ll be showing my series Growing Concerns at Photofusion in Brixton.

 Exhibition dates: 27th of June - the 28th of July. Monday to Saturday 10:30 – 17:30

Growing Concerns focuses on the subject of migration making a link between the deregulation of goods and capitals and the increasing barriers for movement of people. The series uses plants from Asia and the Caribbean Islands, but nonetheless widely available at daily markets in London, to print images directly on the plant leaves by means of the organic process of chlorophyll printing. 

 The images reflect on the postcolonial relationship between these countries and the UK, featuring press cuts from The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Times and The Economist, as well as images from private and public archives. 

This show is being kindly supported by the Arts Council England, as well as by the London Flower School, Photofusion and the London Alternative Photography Collective. 

Thanks to the funding received two panel discussions where organised, you can access the recordings here: 

- In conversation with Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Brandei Estes, Head of the Department of Photographs at Sotheby’s, to discuss how museums, collectors and auction houses  display, collect and sell artwork made with organic materials.We discussed restrictions and strengths of this type of artwork.

- In conversation with karin Bareman and Javier Hirschfeld Moreno on decolonial and empowering approaches to the photographic medium.

This month I have taken a weekend residency at National Portrait Gallery as part of the Victorian Giants exhibition to create unique individual tintype portraits.  You can find more info on the event here. Photos and behind the scenes video by Chelin Miller below. 

I have also been commissioned by Bow Arts to produce a 17 meters wide mural series of tintype portraits as part of the London Festival of Architecture. The commission celebrates the identity of Royal Albert Wharf and its community. This project will act as a precursor to my main residency starting later in the year, forging relationships with the residents, RAW studio artists and RAW Labs visitors.

This month I have been awarded a professional development bursary from a-n. The bursary will support a self-directed research on the chlorophyll printing process. It will enable me to independently learn in my studio an organic photographic method and to make videos to disseminate knowledge of this little-known printing technique. See more info about the grant on this link. 

The chlorophyll printing process occurs naturally in plants in the same way we change pigments when we are exposed to different levels of sunlight. Just as our clothes might leave a mark on our skin in the summer, the image above shows an Aloe Vera plant in Tenerife, in which the silhouettes of the outer leaves of the plant are recorded onto the inner leaves.

See more on the chlorophyll printing process on my a-n blog!