Trip Hazard

Trip Hazard is a new exhibition from Hatch Collective exploring risk, disruption, balance, and the unexpected thresholds in our landscapes and daily lives.

I am delighted to have been asked to collaborate with Zoe Snape as part of this group show.

Our piece ‘Flux’ explores the journey of rage, recovery and repair since my accident 3 years ago.

Rage was very much the process of this piece. I spent time making pieces only to violently damage them. When breaking the pot, I initially thought about how I could achieve breaks that fitted with the aesthetic of the piece. But there had been no control when my head hit the ground or the resulting damage and so I felt the pot element should be the same. My vase is approximately the same size as my head. Although I wrapped it carefully in fabric so that no pieces were lost, all the damage was caused by one hit, one impact with the ground as was the case with my head during the fall.

Similarly the layered silk paintings of my brain and eye scans were slashed with a knife to symbolise the tiny tears that now exist in my brain. It was so hard to have the courage to destroy them, as though the damage would be happening again to my brain but knowing that it had to be done in order to document the repair and recovery which followed. It felt like pain that isn’t pain. An uneasy, difficult destruction that had to be repeated over and over as each length of fabric was shredded.

Research into the visible mending of ceramics and fabrics led me to explore Sashiko and Kintsugi/Kintsukoroi (golden joinery). The idea of treating breakages and repair as part of the history of an object rather than something to disguise. Kintsugi also relates to the Japanese philosophy of mushin and wabi-sabi - the concept of non-attachment, acceptance of change and fate as part of being human, embracing that which is flawed or imperfect, accepting the transience and appreciating things that are impermanent or incomplete. The repair is illuminated by the golden joinery, a physical representation of existing within a moment of calmness amid difficult changing conditions. The unexpected/unwelcome changes of life are clear in the breaks, knocks and shattering of the vase and the rips in the fabric. My repairs are incomplete. Some pieces of the vase are missing, seams are unfinished, loose gold thread dangles from the fabric (because I hope there is more progress to be made in my recovery) and the vase is deliberately mis-shapen by its repair (because I know that my brain function will never be the same again).

Projections of CT scans of my brain play across the piece sometimes on the painted fabric, sometimes on the blank areas. Unpainted areas represent the moments when my brain stops, freezes, drifts off, is unable to adequately process and the moments when I must force my brain to rest, recharge, reset.

Within all the damage and repair is hope. Through continuing medical support, the addition to my life of purple overlays and tinted screens to reduce visual stress, the neurological breaks which enable my brain to reset, the daily physio which will hopefully restore my balance and vestibular system, and the careful planning which enables me to create within the confines of brain injury there is a path – not the one I expected or planned but one where I begin to accept and appreciate the impermanence and incompleteness.

Open for three weekends
⏰ 11am – 4pm

🗓 18–19 April
🗓 25–26 April
🗓 2–3 May

FREE TICKETS & LOCATION:  https://www.ticketsource.com/hatch