me

Well, i wanted to add a picture of me to show you all who i am, but that has been hard, as steve will confirm i hate having my picture taken - so the above is about as best as it gets, plus as a bonus it includes my dog and some crazy topiary!

What to say - i am an artist and as some will know a farmer. [currently my father has taken to introducing me as a fartist... based on the tradition that a parson in the past who often were also farmers were called a farson - how true this is is currently under debate....he also has a big bang theory that involves a bus analogy..!] The family's farm is in South Lincolnshire and as a bit of background is a traditional mixed farm with sheep, suckler cows and arable. I have for years combined the two careers and see them not as separate but all part of the same thing. Like Steve everything i make or undertake art wise is also what i consider to be my practice, so the teaching at Leeds Uni and the relational /participatory/public art commissions are all like the farm they do not have a hierarchy, all relate to my primary concerns. These different elements all provide a lens through which to see and show.

I find art hard, in many ways and often loose the point of it. With 400 sheep lambing, for example, it often seems to be removed far from something that seems urgent or real.
I also believe that my history of 'community'[i hate this term] related work and commissions has impacted on my sense of what art does and who it does it for. I like steve want to be an artist in the world, not just an artist in the art world. I believe in art as agency.

I only make work that is part of a continuing relationship with people [often just an individual]and a site, often it is this farm. Perhaps it documents, comments on or records moments in time. I heard somewhere that it deals with the problem of death... Not sure if this is true - more like the pointlessness of life - but i know that it is about the understanding and representation of landscape/place/site, my connection to the people, place and things we use there and its about looking. Function is at the core of my interests both in what i make and how it is kept. As a way of conceptually getting round not making [increasingly it gets harder - to much stuff in the world - shit stuff at that] my work needs to be useful, as a record of my understanding of place, in the thing that it is and does, in the revealing of a relationship and as an archive for the future. The diagram below is how that archive works.


As a final thought i am really looking forward to getting this project off the ground and working with you all. With an interest in looking the potential to look from so many points of view is exciting.