ROSE (2011) Rose is found in Bow Cemetery having suffered trauma-related memory loss. She is admitted to Stone House Hospital, the former City of London Asylum, where specialists try to illicit the cause of her memory loss and wake her from her amnesia. Rose does not respond to the traditional stimuli Doctors offer, but through several encounters with different smells. The 'scent memories' awakened within her help her recover her forgotten past.
Our sense of smell is strongly associated with memory: anatomically, the nose links directly with the olfactory lobe in the limbic system; the area of the brain considered the seat of emotions. More so than a snippet of sound or a glimpse of an image, catching a trace of a particular scent can transport us back to times past. Dr. A. Hirsch, a US Neurologist, refers to this as 'olfactory-evoked recall' - the immediate recall of childhood memories by a particular odour, and believes the details evoked by nostalgic smells are not as important as the emotions they recall.
Collaboration with Georgina Hounsome (studionumbersix), printed for The Cold Press. Digitally printed on popset grey paper with a soft cover in an edition of 200, each book comes with a limited edition silkscreen print, hand coloured with scented ink.
MR & MRS GREN (2011) Inspired by the mnemonic we used at school for remembering the features that define a 'living thing' (M.R.S.G.R.E.N) we constructed a story. Walter & Vivienne meet and fall in love. The narratives that connect their shared life equally reflect the nuances that make us each individual.
A combined scientific and poetic viewpoint explores the notion of what it is to be alive and what it is to feel alive. Across two chapters, the book contemplates specific traits or needs that fulfil us as living things.
Collaboration with Georgina Hounsome (studionumbersix), printed over five days in residence at the Exchange Gallery, Penzance, as part of PRINT! in May 2011. Silkscreen printed on cartridge paper with letterpress chapter headings and a soft cloth cover, the book is a limited edition of just 40 hand-bound books. Further documentation from the production can be seen on the studionumbersix blog.
ADRIFT (2009) The culmination of my masters course at Falmouth, 'Adrift: A Shadow in the shallows' is a short graphic novel, self published in a limited edition of 100 copies.
The book is based on a true story, and is my interpretation of the Miss Faithful case in New York in the 1930s. The case itself was surrounded by mystery, the actual circumstances of Miss Faithful's death have never been discovered or proved, although the eventual official verdict was suicide. The story is told with minimal text and over eighty illustrations. In the most part, the text covers the concrete facts about the case, with the images presenting possibilities and illustrating the emotional and personal side of unfolding events. This should allow the reader to interpret the case outcomes more widely and make up their own mind about what happened. I won first prize at the Cheltenham Illustration Awards in 2009 with a panel of images from the book.
