Background to the project:

"I arrived at the RCA as a ceramicist. I had spent the previous 2 years turning solid lumps of clay into white liquid ‘slip’. I didn’t realise at the time it was the solidity of the clay I didn't like. I painted the white slip in thin layers onto cardboard boxes and fired them, almost expecting them not to survive. Sometimes they did, but not for long. If a photograph was clay, they would be clay photographs. The RCA had a hot glass furnace and I rejected the clay altogether. It wasn’t the finished glass objects that drew me in, but the overlooked journey to get to the object; the heat, the colour, the fluidity and the performance and decisions of the makers.

What interested me most about my Antarctic residency was the space between the environment and the people living in it. It was difficult to exist on a mental and physical level, and I made work that reflected that. Antarctica intensified my awareness of mark making, and made me reject the notion of 'making objects' even more than before. When I returned home I created a project that was based on film and photography, but I needed to use a light that was less ‘solid’, I wanted the very source of my images to be more precarious, less controllable.

Working with microbiologist Simon Park and Caterina Albano, I used bacterial bioluminescence, a living organism, to create a series of photographs, film and installations. The bacteria died over the course of my portraits, it became even harder to capture the photographs of naked skin, and that is how I wanted it to be. They nearly don’t exist."

This project is called 'Exploring the Invisible' it has been made possible by the support of the Wellcome Trust and is one of the projects included in ‘Bio Design – Nature, Science, Creativity’, Edited and text by William Myers. foreword by Paola Antonelli, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Published by Thames and Hudson.

The ‘Bioluminescent photograph booth’ was installed for two days at the British Science Festival. The dark space filled with hundreds of glowing petri dishes engaged with children and adults during the day, on sat evening it went into action as 9 willing volunteers stood naked, immersed in bacterial light in order that a photographic image could be produced. A huge thank you to all of the volunteers for their intrepid spirit. Everyone reported back that they felt the experience to be extremely positive and uplifting.

We undress for medical reasons, exposure usually associated with discomfort and fear. Exposure in this case, cocooned in the faint blue light brought calm and quietness.

Bioluminescent photograph booth at Surrey Univeristy Campus during the British Science Festival

'Exploring The Invisible' Blog 2009 - 2011

Background to the project:

Project Blog below: