Selected works and processes leading to R&D
project ‘Seen and Not Seen’
+ Supporting Statements
The following works span performance, installation and participatory practice developed over several years. Together, they demonstrate a consistent interest in relational identity, visibility, exchange and scaffolding - concerns that directly inform the current project. These examples show how I work with text, participation, and relational meaning-making.
A 39-line poem realised as a set of unfired clay vessels, created during my return to practice following a long hiatus and the early stages of late neurodivergent diagnosis. Each line is etched onto a small kurinuki-inspired pot, designed to be stacked, rearranged and handled. While the forms appear robust, they remain structurally fragile, mirroring the instability of identity during periods of re-evaluation and change. The work explores how meaning, responsibility and self-understanding are shaped relationally - asking what happens when familiar narratives, roles or assumptions are disrupted, redistributed, or allowed to fall apart.
Image: 10 of 39 Lines of a Poem, 2025 (mobile phone camera)
The Reckoning (2025)
Circling the Square (2024)
A text-based installation created during a micro-residency at Hull Artist Research Initiative (HARI), housed in a reclaimed former motor-parts warehouse. Fourteen short lines of text were placed throughout the building, responding to its material history and atmosphere. The work began with a piece of historic graffiti left by two Saturday workers in 1964 and expanded into a fragmented, partially fictional narrative imagining a connection between them. Rather than presenting a complete story, the texts functioned as a framework - inviting viewers to assemble meaning through movement, inference and relational imagination. The work reflects my ongoing interest in how identity, intimacy and meaning emerge through incomplete information, projection and spatial encounter.
Image: They Wanted to Unzip Each Other, 2024 (mobile phone camera)
It Was Only Tea (2008)
A performance with photographic installation staged in the vaults beneath London Bridge. Through symbolic domestic actions and materials, the work explored visibility, performativity and gendered expectation within intimate relationships, ending with the immersion of a wedding dress constructed from teabags into a bath.
Image: Four dresses hang post-performance, 2008 (digital SLR)
Telling Tales (2004)
A participatory performance in which one-line poems stitched onto a dress were removed and handed to passers-by as I crossed Millennium Bridge, then replaced with new texts written by them.
The work explored identity as relational and provisional, shaped through brief acts of communication rather than fixed self-expression. Authorship and visibility shifted continually through encounter, with meaning formed through consent, exchange and response rather than performance for an audience. The piece reflects an ongoing interest in how identity is carried, undone and reshaped through interaction - being seen through others while remaining in flux.
Image: Telling Tales - Emma handing out ribbons, 2004 (video still)
This project used short, one-line texts placed on different sticker materials within everyday environments, photographed to capture how meaning shifts through context, location and juxtaposition. Early works invited response via an email address, while later iterations left communication open or unresolved. As a precursor to Telling Tales, the project explored exchange, visibility and relational identity - concerns that directly inform Seen and Not Seen, where meaning is similarly shaped through encounter rather than fixed authorship.
Image: I’ve Never Been the Same, masking tape on phone box, 2007 (digital SLR)
The Sticker Project (2004-7)
This is Who We Are (2004)
I invited members of the public in busy London locations to write a personal memory on the back of their hand, subverting the everyday act of note-taking into an intimate, public gesture. The photographed hands captured moments of trust, authorship and self-definition, establishing an early focus on identity, exchange and participation that later developed into Sticker Project and Telling Tales.
Image: A selection of hands, 2004 (digital SLR)
The Blindfold Project (2004)
I wore a blindfold continuously for three days and nights, navigating daily life both alone and with support. By cooking, walking, drawing and writing without sight, the work explored how internal perception aligns - or fails to align - with external space. The project examined identity as something sensed, negotiated and constructed through partial information, foregrounding the gap between how we experience ourselves internally and how we are positioned within the world.
Image: The Blindfold Project, Broadway Market, 2004 (video still)
