I was commissioned by the V&A shop to design a print for their successful range of exclusive special editions. After some time of researching the history of the building and institution, and visits wandering the vast and labyrinthine corridors of the wonderful architecture my outcome is 'Phantasmagoria' . The print in essence explores the nature of observing a place in the context of its history alongside experiencing it as an individual, resulting in a personal map of the museum.

'We have almost lost the idea of a museum being a work of art in its own right. Instead it has become a complex machine for the presentation and display of objects. For the interior decoration of a museum to be anything but subservient to the artefacts it displays has come to be regarded as almost a crime'.

I was interested to learn of the many lives of what we now call the V&A museum. The RCA's initial residency, The Museum of Ornamental Art, The Museum of Construction. For years the purpose of the site was unclear- instead the excitement lay in the architecture and interiors of the building rather than its contents. The officials were all keen on experimenting with, and reviving the use of mosaic in glass and ceramic, tile, terracotta and mural paintings, the dedication to this intent was so much so that family, friends, RCA students and convicts, were brought in to complete the decorative floor work. Structurally forward thinking too, the emphasis was on using 'new samples of building stones and marbles, specimens of all the best cements and asphalts'…even down to the guttering and pipe work new innovations were used.

Growing up in London,and visiting the museum at many different stages of my life the building holds for me personally layers of experience. In the same way memories and dreams can interweave one another, the hallways, staircases, and the surprisingly vast rooms that I have walked at one time, or another, always retain the traces of something other than the present, shifting and rearranging itself in my absence, and presenting a new self to me on every occasion.

Available in the V&A shop or online here.

Printing by Manymono.

Quotes from 'The Victoria & Albert museum- A history of its building' by John Physick.

In our indian summer a few weeks past I went up to the barns in wales. Autumn is a beautiful time to be in the Brecon Beacons, the intense greens now spotted with fiery flecks. I took my loom with me, and tried some outdoor weaving, trying to take in the surroundings of the barns.

Photoshop experiment

I was asked by Computer Arts Projects to create an opening illustration for a feature they were running on how designers can go about creating and selling their own prints. The brief was to show this process in situ. A really enjoyable quick job, the issue is out now.

Final image for the feature

Layers on the rack

Back in the summer I made this weaving in response to my friend JR Seaton of Call Super's EP Staircase. There was something in these tracks that got me interested in thinking about the correlation between weaving and music within their processes.

Before I have talked about planning vs experimentation in the weaving process. There is definitely a joy in improvising where you will begin to be led by the rhythm of the process, and it will build up a pattern as you go- perhaps more specific and true to the present.

A few months ago I went on a day trip to Chichester and had a look in the cathedral, noticing a medieval songbook in one corner. I was wondering about how the notation and visualisation of music came about and how that might change in the electronic/digital age where perhaps there aren't so much specific notes but sounds and beats.

reverse

reverse

NYC section weaving, further colour studies.

Planning

red cotton, white silk, blue cotton, yellow linen.

On my last day in New York back in May, my friend Sally and I went to the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art so I could take one last look over Manhattan. In looking out across the park and city I realised how over the course of my time there I had built up an internal map of the city , which from the clarity of the elevated vantage point, and the discussion of bearings with another mind I had realised was quite inaccurate.

Mapping is something we all do. Our minds are full of visual projections of our treaded past, every map evolving alongside our experiences. I was interested in freezing that moment of perception, to create a sort of map that reflected my view of the city at that point of experience. Before that trip, New York has existed to me only through songs, books and films, but never had that information gathered as a whole but remained only as disconnected fragments.

The idea of 'the whole', or 'the bigger picture' or say 'the past'- all collections I suppose, as opposed to many individual and separate parts I always find interesting.

This was addressed in a visual way at the Sonia Delauney exhibition I visited at The Cooper Hewitt Museum, in the theory of Simultaneity.

Talking of a collaboration between poet Cendrars and Sonia Delauney, the poet Apollinaire comments;

'Cendrars and Madame Delauney-Terk realised a unique experiment in Simultaneity, written in contrasts of colors in order to train the eye to read with one glance the whole of a poem, as an orchestra conductor reads with one glance the notes placed up and down the bar, as one sees with a single glance the plastic elements printed on a poster'.

(Color moves- Sonia Delauney)

These thoughts above swirled as the open call for submissions was announced for Poundshop 4.

On the roof, Sally, who has been living in Japan this past year (look at her beautiful work here too) showed me some examples of the Japanese method of wrapping called Furoshiki.

In previous poundshop pop up shops having made wrapping papers it occurred to me, a textile version would perhaps make a nice development.

It evokes to me the ancient traveller's bindle and brought me again to that gathering of collected experience that we take with us.

Initial sketch of idea on silk .

Gouache paintings

Gouache painting

From left; Initial sketches, gouache paintings, weaving draft, weaving, screenprinting positives, postcards from new york (Guggenheim ceiling, Robert Delauney and Kandinsky), ink and paint blots, gouache design, first sketch on silk and final outcome.

There are still a few days left at the Poundshop if you would like to buy one.CLICK HERE. They are only £5, screenprinted onto natural linen in yellow and blue. 45 x 45 cm. Can be used as reusable gift wrapping/ furoshiki, to transport, to protect items within your bag, or whatever you think of. I am using it to wrap books that usually get damaged in my bag.

Earlier in the summer I visited the barns in Wales for which I am to create some weavings for. On this trip primarily gathering imagery to what I am instinctively drawn to; realising it takes a great deal of seeing and observing and experiencing a place in order to try to create something that can exist amongst it. More soon.