Artist talk for the Open College of the Arts

On 14 April I’ll be giving an artist’s talk for the Open College of the Arts.

I’ll be focussing on my most recent practice through Performance Fingerprints: collaborative work developed with musicians, and a way of thinking about drawing that sits at the intersection of sound, gesture, movement, and mark-making.

What interests me there is not illustration or accompaniment, but a genuinely shared space in which music and drawing can affect one another in real time. The work has grown through rehearsal, conversation, improvisation, and the practical business of building something that can be played rather than simply operated.

The talk will touch on how that way of working has evolved: from early responsive drawing experiments, through collaboration with performers, to a broader practice in which the machine begins to function less as a tool for producing images and more as an instrument inside a live situation.

What I hope to get across is that collaboration changes the work at its root. It changes pace, attention, and decision-making. It also keeps drawing open for me: something that can listen, respond, and remain slightly unsettled.