It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to the Wrexham University’s School of Art and Design MA Summer Exhibition.
The work on display speaks for itself - showcasing not only the depth and quality of artistic expression, but also each student’s unique creative journey and personal development. Every piece invites you to look closer, to question, to reflect, and to discover new perspectives. Together, they form a vibrant testament to the curiosity, skill, and dedication that define our postgraduate community.
Professor Anne Nortcliffe SFHEA
FInstMC
FIET
CEng Dean of Faculty of Arts, Computing and Engineering Wrexham University
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Tom Echlin
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
My work looks at where nostalgia, decay, and the surreal overlap. The scenes might seem inviting at first, but there’s a quiet sense of displacement where places and objects tied to joy and leisure, made strange by emptiness, distortion, and an almost heavy stillness. Swimming pools, landscapes, toys, and familiar imagery appear again and again, but in spaces that feel abandoned, half-lit, or frozen in time. A pink flamingo, a shiny beach ball, the bright bars of a test-pattern screen. Each stands out against a backdrop of silence and neglect. The water still shimmers, but with no one there, the mood shifts from playful to unsettling, as if these are fragments from a world that’s already ended with a figure silently watching.
Light plays a big part. It streams in through impossible windows, throws false rainbows across tiled walls, or glows from outdated screens into the night. It’s light as a memory, not comfort, it’s bright enough to draw you in, but also to remind you of what’s gone. The textures are softened and grainy, like worn photographs or half-remembered moments. The spaces are carefully built, but the way they’re shown feels fragile, almost slipping away. By placing familiar things in unfamiliar, in-between spaces, I want to show how comfort can be fragile, and how nostalgia often sits close to unease. The work asks you to linger between recognition and strangeness, to feel the pull of the past and the distance that comes with it. Here, joy and melancholy share the same space, and you’re left in the middle of that uneasy beauty.
My work begins with a simple belief: Art is Health. Creativity is not an optional extra; it is an intrinsic part of the human experience. To create with our hands, shape an idea into a tangible form, is deeply connected to our wellbeing. In a world driven by social media perfectionism, we are being distanced from the raw, messy, joyful act of making. Working with mixed media, I explore creativity not only as a form of expression but as an essential human practice. My Greek/British heritage shapes my understanding of cultures, histories, and traditions, and fuels my curiosity about what connects us as people. I use accessible, everyday, and often found materials, painting, paper, textiles, and metal because I want creativity to feel possible for everyone. My pieces are not about polished perfection; they are about being human. Each work is a response to urgent questions: Where are we headed as a people?
What happens to our humanity if we stop creating?
This is personal, but it’s also political. My research spans philosophy, social studies, cultural policy, economic theory, and aligns with Ray Dalio’s cycles of the rise and fall of empires. According to his ‘Big Cycle’ framework, we are deep into The Decline: past financial bust and downturn, entrenched in printing money and credit, widening inequality, political division, and edging toward systemic restructuring that historically precedes a new world order.
In such moments, the systems we live in no longer serve our humanity or wellbeing. Creativity becomes more than self-expression, it becomes protest. Making art pushes back against a culture of consumption, disconnection, and control. It keeps joy, curiosity, and human connection alive. I invite others to reclaim creativity, to make without fear or judgement. Whether in a gallery, workshop, or kitchen, creating is a refusal to give in. It’s how we remember we are human.
Instagram: @house of rena
Lucy Walsh
MA ARTS IN HEALTH
Threads of Connection is a series of weaves that explores where creative arts and dementia care meet. Each piece is made using dementia-friendly colours, chosen for their calming, engaging qualities. The yarns I have used vary in texture, weight and warmth to create a sensory-rich experience that invites touch as much as sight.
The process of weaving is slow, repetitive and rhythmic with qualities that can offer a sense of comfort and familiarity. For people living with dementia, repetition can be soothing. It mirrors the quiet patterns found in everyday life, like folding washing or stirring a cup of tea. These small, familiar actions often hold deep meaning, and I wanted the weaving to reflect that. For me, the act of weaving becomes a way of connecting to myself, to the materials, and to the people I’m making it for.
This work is part of a wider project that looks at how creative practice can support wellbeing, communication and connection for people living with dementia. As part of my volunteering work with Denbighshire County Council’s Edge of Care Team, Red Robin at NHS North Wales hospital, Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and a shadowing Denbighshire Leisure’s Lost in Art Scheme. I am particularly interested in how sensory engagement, especially through colour and texture, can spark moments of presence, interaction and expression – something beyond words. Threads of Connection invites us to think about how art can be used gently and meaningfully in dementia care. It asks us to notice the smaller details, for example the feel of a thread, the warmth of a colour, the rhythm of making and how these things can offer comfort, recognition, and even joy.
It’s about creating moments that feel safe, soft, and shared. A way of weaving people together through memory, material and care.
Email: lucywalsh15@gmail.com
MA ART
INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
Huw Davies
MA ART INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
The Ships on the Wall
My practice has focused on a number of long lost mediaeval drawings initially rediscovered by my daughters on a 700 year old wall in North Wales. The drawings have historical, folkloric, magical and religious significance.
I have been responding to these drawings, whilst at the same time researching the origins and purpose of them. A pursuit that has helped me to understand so many elements of the past and present of a society founded on and by the excesses of global trade. Trade that for the most part has, and still is being conducted on the sea. The drawings were votive offerings. A bi product of the colonisation of Wales and the colonial push west that resulted in the enormous wealth and suffering of the transatlantic slave trade. They were for the most part, if not exclusively, created by poor, now nameless travellers and likely to be the only mark they have left of their time on earth. 700 year old evidence of perilous journeys as relevant today where we are still able to witness poor people, adrift in small boats, at the mercy of market forces and the unpredictable sea. My practice takes the drawings of those long dead artists as a starting point. Research inspires my own creative output.
Curiosity and the telling of untold stories is the driving force. The turning over of stones. Curiosity, creative output, research. An ever expanding circle of words and images. My intention is to create an illustrated book to contextualise these long lost drawings. A story book which will incorporate my own work, a different view on the ‘problem’ of poor people in boats and how my own family origins are intricately bound up in what, at first glance, were just some ships on a wall.
Instagram: @artisthuwdavies
Vimeo: artisthuwdavies
Elisa Madin
MA ART INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
I am a textile artist from Shropshire, whose work is rooted in a deep passion for social history, culture, and heritage. My practice centres around a carefully curated collection of antiques and curiosities, gathered over years of exploring antique shops and car boot sales. These forgotten objects are reimagined into new narratives, celebrating the uniqueness of the past through a contemporary lens. Storytelling lies at the heart of my work. Narrative driven, and inherently theatrical, each piece begins with meticulous research and sketching before being brought to life using the historic embroidery techniques I mastered during my BA (Hons) at the Royal School of Needlework. My work has taken me to Cairo, Paris, and London, designing for brands including Anut, Lock & Co, and Susan Aldworth.
My interdisciplinary approach spans art, millinery, and textiles - working with archival materials and collaborating with other artists. I have travelled internationally designing and creating workshops with female factory workers and refugees in Egypt and the Middle East. Through my practice there has been a transfer and exchange of knowledge enabling me to create unique responses to shared stories. I then bring these encounters to life through visual displays and maquettes.
Instagram: @elissamadin
Lorna McDines
MA ART INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
Fungi make worlds, they also unmake them (Sheldrake 2020)
My work was inspired by the T.V. programme The Last of Us, a post- apocalyptical drama which showed how Fungi had evolved through climate change and had contaminated the human food change, turning people into Zombie-like creatures spreading the mycelium throughout the population. My research showed me how this multicellular organism, nicknamed The Wood Wide Web had created a network beneath us that spreads out its hyphae filaments searching for a food source. To discover more I collaborated with the forensic laboratories at the main university campus and with a local farmer who had diversified and was growing unusual mushrooms such as Blue Oyster and Lions Mane.
As my research and understanding of this organism progressed so did my artwork. I began by traditionally using plaster and acrylics onto canvas, trying to express its movement and form. I grew fungi and mycelium in petri dishes, seeing how it devoured all the contained space, even trying to escape looking for a food source. I realised that through my artwork and research I wanted to educate and inform my audience, not only of the beauty of the mycelium’s form but also how important it is to our eco system and humankind.
For the exhibition at Ty Pawb, I decided to move away from my traditional style and create a scientific styled piece using a vintage hospital trolley on which I placed a series of petri dishes holding mycelium at various stages of growth, like a virtual time lapse.
My work keeps evolving and for this final exposition I have created a multi-media installation which includes organic materials, time based media, paintings, and scientific apparatus. My interdisciplinary practice investigates bioart aiming to express my curiosity at the vast network of mycelium. I hope the enthusiasm and knowledge I have gained through my research will inspire others.
Instagram: @lornamcdines
Email: lornamcdines@yahoo.co.uk
Kamila Morawska
MA
ART INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
The impact of Catholicism on sexual expression through art
My work explores the tension between the sacred and the mundane, focusing on how sexuality is depicted within the context of Catholicism. It emphasises the significant influence of the Catholic Church on contemporary art movements, making it a relevant and captivating subject for modern art. The work produced during this MA is not merely rebellious or provocative for its own sake; instead, it seeks to reveal the deep psychological, historical, and aesthetic contradictions inherent in religious iconography and doctrine. Throughout my research during this MA, I am particularly inspired by the strict stylisation and symbolic abstraction of early Christian art. The hieratic figures, the gilded flatness, the intentional detachment from realism - all function as a visual language that aims to go beyond the metaphorical ‘’flesh.’’ I reinterpret these ideas to shift the focus back onto the human body and sexualisation, including its desires, shames, and exaltations. Each art movement is examined separately, with personal biases set aside, to ensure a thorough and unbiased understanding.
The constant layering of acrylic on top of the canvas and the removal of each layer with wipes allows me to create a metaphorical narrative on the canvas. Each texture exposes how sexual beliefs and religious influence can impact each layer - almost as if following a person’s interpretation of religious texts and how swiftly their perception can shift. Gold leaf, fallen angel imagery, and bright red eyes are central to the piece, aiming to illustrate how each movement shapes our view of art today.
By exploring the collision between divine narrative and physical experience, my work seeks to expose the silent negotiations many undertake within faith traditions. It highlights the simultaneous yearning for transcendence and the undeniable reality of the body, offering a transformative perspective that can inspire hope and offer new insights.
Sam Purl-Jones
MA ART INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
This body of work explores healing - not as a fixed destination, but as a cyclical, intentional practice. It brings together years of questioning identity, mental health, and the emotional residue we carry through our lives. What began as an investigation into the relationship between identity and mental wellbeing gradually evolved into something broader, quieter, and more personal.
Through interdisciplinary research, including time spent with a Mindfulness Based Core Process psychotherapist and a Chinese medicine practitioner, I’ve developed a conceptual five-step healing framework. Their intuitive, embodied, and non-linear understandings of health deeply informed the direction of this project. Rooted in research yet shaped by lived experience, this framework may eventually serve as a tool, a philosophy, or remain a personal mythology. For now, it acts as a map - drawn through study, metaphor, and instinct - guiding an ongoing process of healing.
The methods and materials are purposefully diverse, reflecting states of stillness, spontaneity, and layered meaning. This project functions as both a case study and a creative offering. Before reaching this clarity, I recognised that my work had become overcomplicated and fragmented. I stepped back to reflect, turning inward and focusing on identity through selfinquiry, with healing and wellbeing at the centre. This shift opened new connections, with feminist thinkers and women cultivating safe, intentional spaces, and led me to integrate mindfulness and holistic practices.
I also began tuning into what I need most: joy, calm, and kindness. Treating myself as a site of exploration, I committed to daily rituals that nourish and ground me. Where my work was once fuelled by feminine rage and misunderstanding, it now feels like a love letter to myself, my soul. An invitation to understand and heal, grow and nourish who I was, am, and will be. Or maybe it’s just sarcastic graphs and crushed eggshells - I’ll let you decide.
Beata Skorek
MA ART INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
I am an interdisciplinary artist and chef whose practice explores the intersections between food, culture, and sensory experience. Working across culinary arts, eco-design, and installation, I investigate how habits, traditions, and cultural norms shape our relationship with what we eat. My work draws from both scientific research and artistic experimentation, blending visual aesthetics with the chemistry and psychology of taste.
Deeply inspired by nature and seasonal cycles, I incorporate local and foraged ingredients not only in recipes but also as materials for eco-printing, natural dyeing, and object-making. Copper, textiles, and botanical pigments become metaphors for sustainability and the reimagining of everyday rituals. My creative process is rooted in dialogue with communities, with experts such as food scientists, and with the landscapes that provide their materials. By engaging all the senses, I create immersive experiences that invite audiences to question their own habits and perceptions.
My recent project, Exploring Artistic Practices in Overcoming Dietary Barriers and Habits, investigates how artistic practice can challenge and transform dietary patterns shaped by cultural, social, and economic norms. Beginning with research into molecular gastronomy, I analyse the visual and sensory strategies used by leading chefs to make food irresistible. I apply these insights to my own culinary creations, testing how unusual colours, textures, and presentations influence curiosity and willingness to taste.
Interviews with individuals who had undergone significant dietary change revealed triggers such as health concerns, relationships, and economic shifts, with cultural norms often acting as powerful boundaries. In response, I have created installations combining foraged Welsh plants, eco-printed textiles, and handmade copper tableware. These works evoke the sensory richness of a forest, engaging sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. By reframing local and wild foods as artistic and cultural artefacts, I encourage audiences to reconsider their relationship with nature, tradition, and the possibilities of the plate.
Instagram: @beataskorekart
Website: https://beataskorek.art/
MA DESIGN
INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
Jenny Thomas
MA DESIGN INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
My work is deeply inspired by Wales - its landscape, history, and myth. I am drawn to the textures of the land, the atmosphere of its hills and coastlines, and the stories that have shaped its identity. Using traditional printmaking techniques - primarily linocut and woodcutI aim to capture the spirit of place through hand-carved, hand-printed imagery that reflects both observation and emotional response.
At the heart of my practice is a love of colour. I am continually refining my use of colour and tone to enhance mood and composition, often working with bold, harmonious palettes to evoke a sense of warmth and joy. My process is intuitive and hands-on, combining precise carving with playful experimentation, particularly in how layers of colour and texture interact. This body of work marks an ongoing journey to define and develop my artistic style. It is both an exploration and a declaration - a statement of intent to live as a maker and pursue a life of creativity. I am influenced by the natural world, everyday beauty, and the cultural richness of Wales. Through my work, I hope to offer moments of quiet appreciation, visual delight, and emotional uplift.
Ultimately, I create because I feel compelled to. It brings me joy, and I hope my work brings the same feeling to others.
Instagram: @JenniferAnnArtworks
Zara Thomas
MA DESIGN INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
Driven by a passion for storytelling and characters, I have been investigating how narrative and visual language can be used as an effective form of communication. I use mixed media techniques to develop visual narratives, inspired largely by science fiction and fantasy comics, animation and movies.
I work closely with author Dazz Thomas, developing a pantheon of interconnected stories, set in an alternative future and inspired by our personal interests and experiences. Much of my recent work has been focused on providing illustrations for Frequency, a short story from this setting.
Inspired by several science fiction stories, Frequency places the central protagonist, Razer, in a mundane situation which nevertheless proves to be alien and unsettling to him. The narrative follows him as he struggles to follow ‘The Rules’ of navigating unfamiliar social interactions in pursuit of a single treasure – an old, paint-splattered radio.
While Razer’s difficulty in communicating and connecting with the ‘Other People’ around him was written with neurodivergent differences in communication in mind, his experience may be relatable to many, for different reasons. By illustrating the story mostly from Razer’s viewpoint, the intention was to encourage the reader to base their judgement of the character on his thoughts and actions, and to emphasize any feelings of empathy they may have for his predicament.
My choices of media, colour and texture are influenced by my research, and are intended to reflect Razer’s identity as well as his thoughts and feelings. In choosing to focus on his experiences rather than his appearance, my hope is that by the time that Razer’s reflection is finally revealed towards the end of the story, the reader is left with the view that what he looks like is ultimately unimportant – he is a person, first and foremost.
Instagram - @hexorahart
Tumblr - @hexorahart
Email - hexorahart@gmail.com
MA PAINTING
Stuart Burne MA PAINTING
I am a painter from Holyhead, on the Isle of Anglesey, and for the past two decades I have been making a sustained series of paintings inspired by the local landscape, in particular the Irish Sea and the coastal port of Holyhead. My recent paintings have explored the relationship between monoprinting and painting, combining the fluid, unpredictable qualities of monoprinting with the more deliberate processes of painting.
I have begun to enjoy working onto paper, as the surface of the paint changes and reveals new textures, and I am particularly drawn to the immediacy of mark making. Whether working on location or in the studio, I am attentive to the movement and colour changes of the Irish Sea, seeking to absorb and translate these shifting impressions into my work.
My recent research has explored the psychogeographic influence of the Welsh seascape and landscape, a theme that has become increasingly evident in my paintings. I began my formal art education with a Foundation Diploma in Art & Design at Coleg Menai (2003–04), before completing a BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Glyndŵr University (Coleg Menai) between 2004 and 2009.
Isobel Evans MA PAINTING
The central themes of my practice revolve around fear, anxiety, and isolation, often approaching imagery in a way that evokes the uncanny; a feeling described as a sense of unease stemming from the familiar becoming strange or unsettling. I typically work in mixed media, primarily in black and white, as I feel this helps emphasise the heightened emotional intensity of the subjects I explore. The monochromatic palette is deliberate; it strips the imagery down to its essential forms and adds a sense of ambiguity, which I feel is appropriate for the themes that run through my work. Visually, the work is rooted in narrative imagery, often drawing from filmic visual references and the rural landscape in which I live. I use cinematic techniques to tell stories that tap into the tension and unease often found in both fictional and non-fictional narratives. Within the work, there is a filmic quality to the construction of images. I often create in a fast-paced manner as a way of translating moving imagery of film into still life; similarly, my works often have a framing device, another nod to my love of cinema.
Instagram: @isobelfineart
Email: issyevans2001@outlook.com
Erin Forbes-Buthlay MA PAINTING
Forbes-Buthlay’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in the exploration of abstraction as a primary mode of expression, which she finds both compelling and challenging. Recently, she has expanded her practice by engaging with portraiture and the use of reference imagery, prompting critical inquiries into notions of identity, self-representation within her work. These portraits, often based on images of herself or close family members, serve as a site for examining the intersection between personal history and artistic process. Her work is strongly informed by the legacy of Abstract Expressionism from the 1950s, particularly its emphasis on gestural mark-making, physicality, and the primacy of process. Forbes-Buthlay’s approach privileges the agency of materials, and an openness to chance and spontaneity.
Her use of layering and reworking of marks reflects a sustained negotiation with form and meaning. She allows the paintings to soak up the pigments and decide where they would like to sit. Highlighting marks are made throughout the stage of creation, the artist picks out elements of interest and layers over the top. Her practice is fundamentally a responsive investigation that challenges and redefines the boundaries of abstraction and self-expression.
Eloise Hawes MA PAINTING
Eloise Hawes’s use of blue is deeply inspired by her travels to Greece, with each artwork reflecting memories from the islands of Rhodes, Kefalonia, and Crete. This rich, endless blue captures the vast Aegean Sea and open skies she experienced on her first trip abroad to Rhodes; a journey that profoundly influenced her art. The slower pace and relaxed culture of Greece stayed with her, inspiring her to convey that atmosphere in her work while inviting viewers to take a visual escape from everyday life. Using oil pastels, Hawes embraces a childlike freedom in her mark-making, while her limited colour palette helps reduce pressure, allowing for more playful and uninhibited expression. Her paintings develop from personal photos and memories, carrying the feelings she experienced in Greece. Small details, like cats quietly wandering across her compositions, recur throughout her work. These cats symbolize herself and her curiosity to explore. They also connect to Greece and remind her of a beloved childhood pet, encouraging her to paint with the carefree joy of a child once again.
Sally Ann Jones MA PAINTING
Sally Ann Jones is an acrylic and mixed media artist whose work explores the emotional and atmospheric qualities of landscapes, rooted in the rugged beauty of Eryri (Snowdonia) and the wider Welsh countryside. Her paintings evoke a sense of place that is both deeply personal and quietly universal.
Working in a semi abstract style, Sally Ann draws upon romanticism and the sublime to create landscapes that are not literal depictions but expressions of memory, mood, and internal experience.
Born in Cambridge and raised in North Wales, Sally Ann’s practise is informed by early memories of family time spent immersed in the natural world. These formative experiences, combined with a fascination with artists such as JMW Turner, have shaped her approach to capturing the fleeting, intangible qualities of the landscape; shifting light, distant forms, and the silence of remote places.
Her current body of work reflects a focus on fragmentation, both visual and conceptual. Through the construction of larger compositions from smaller individual pieces, Sally Ann explores how memory and place are experienced in fragments; layered, resembled and often elusive. This methodology mirrors the way we remember landscapes, not as whole, fixed scenes, but as emotional expressions stitched together over time.
Having completed a Bachelors Degree with Honours in Fine Art at Wrexham School of Art, Sally Ann is now hoping this show will go toward her graduating with a Masters Degree in Painting.
MA PHOTOGRAPHY
Marnie Brown
MA PHOTOGRAPHY
Invisible Roles
Invisible Roles is a photographic exploration of motherhood, disability, and the unseen labour that shapes everyday life. Through intimate documentary portraits and collaborative imagemaking, the project focuses on Charlotte - a police officer and mother to Louis, a six-year-old with a rare genetic condition.
Over several weeks, I photographed Charlotte and Louis in their home and community, capturing the quiet rhythms and repetitions of their routine. Louis’s room, at the centre of his care, became a recurring stage - its walls holding the weight of both protection and limitation.
My own experiences as a mother of a disabled child informed the sensitivity and trust in these sessions, creating a shared understanding between us.
The work intertwines my own photographs with Polaroids taken by Louis, whose images offer an unfiltered view of his world. This participatory approach allowed him to claim authorship, revealing moments of joy, pride, and self-expression. For Charlotte and her husband, seeing these photographs was transformative-they recognised them as a voice for their son they hadn’t previously considered.
By combining my perspective with Louis’s, Invisible Roles challenges the dominant narratives around disability, instead presenting a layered portrait of resilience, identity, and care. The project invites viewers into the intimate space of family life, asking them to witness the complexity of a mother’s many roles and the agency of a child whose voice is often mediated by others.
At its core, Invisible Roles is about visibility - not just of disability, but of love, advocacy, and the everyday work that remains unseen.
Rob Kirman
MA PHOTOGRAPHY
Staging Masculinity: Don’t Die of Embarrassment
Don’t Die of Embarrassment is the outcome of my documentary project Staging Masculinity, which began with a simple but urgent question: why are so many men reluctant to talk about their health, even when their lives may depend on it? Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in UK men, yet stigma, fear, and outdated ideas about masculinity still stop many from seeking help. I have witnessed the devastating impact of delayed diagnosis, and this work is my way of challenging that silence.
The title comes from a truth both blunt and heartbreaking: many men avoid seeing their GP or having a simple PSA test because of discomfort, pride, or embarrassment. It is meant to be impossible to ignore - a plea and a warning rolled into one, directly challenging the idea that “real men” don’t talk about their bodies, fears, or vulnerabilities.
Through staged, high-contrast portraits and smaller, candid images, I seek to strip away stereotypes of how men face illness. Each man is shown as whole, defined by courage, humou and resilience - alongside moments when the mask slips and the private self emerges.
From the outset, this has been collaborative. Every man, and every medical professional or family member here, shaped how they were seen, sharing stories, fears, and laughter. These photographs carry their voices as much as my own.
At its heart, this exhibition is both an artistic exploration and a public health intervention. It aims to spark conversations between fathers and sons, brothers, partners, and friends, and to make speaking about symptoms, fears, and tests an act of strength. If even one man leaves resolved to get tested or speak up, these photographs have done their job.
Grace Wood MA PHOTOGRAPHY
Overlooked
A portrait of North Wales beyond the picturesque
Overlooked is a photographic study of the spaces within North Wales that are often passed by, disregarded, or deliberately excluded from conventional representations of landscape. Absent are the sweeping vistas and golden-hour spectacle; in their place are suburban edges, disused plots, weathered paths, and the quiet remnants of post-industrial life landscapes that rarely find their way onto postcards or social media feeds.
This project marks a significant shift in both my practice and perspective. Where I was once drawn to the romantic and idealised views of the region, I became increasingly aware of a growing detachment a sense that these polished images, however beautiful, were offering less in terms of meaningful engagement. The land, I realised, was becoming a backdrop for performance rather than a subject in its own right.
In response, I redirected my lens to the margins places shaped by time, change, neglect, and resilience. These spaces may lack immediate visual appeal, but they are rich in narrative and presence. They speak not through spectacle, but through subtlety.
The work resists aesthetic embellishment in favour of quiet observation. It is an invitation to reconsider how we define beauty, what we choose to frame, and what we routinely exclude. Overlooked asks us to slow down, to look again, and to recognise value in the everyday, the unresolved, and the unseen.
Sometimes, the most honest landscapes are the ones we’ve trained ourselves not to notice.
Birgitta Zoutman MA PHOTOGRAPHY
Everyday Alters
My practice begins in the home, in the interplay between light, object, and feeling. I work without elaborate plans, letting time, mood, and the changing seasons shape the frame. The process is guided by sensory intuition: the feel of a leaf’s surface, the texture of linen, the way morning light lingers on a curve of fruit.
Photography is both a means of self-expression and a form of refuge for me. Living with autism, ADHD, and chronic illness, I move through the world with a heightened awareness of detail and a need to pace my energy carefully. This has shaped not only what I create but how I create it - working in short, deliberate bursts, allowing rest to be part of the rhythm.
My images are made slowly, using natural light and minimal post-production to preserve their tactile qualities.
The objects I choose are never arbitrary. Some are tied to personal history: an old key, vintage books and dried botanicals. Others are gathered in the moment for their form, texture, or the way they hold light. I do not use them as coded metaphors but as tangible presences- carriers of memory and emotion through their simple being.
Influenced by still life traditions yet rooted in contemporary lived experience, my work bridges art history and autobiography. It is informed by thinkers such as Gaston Bachelard, whose reflections on the home as a site of intimacy resonate deeply, and Roland Barthes, whose notion of punctum speaks to the small, piercing details that anchor my compositions. Ultimately, my work is about care-care for objects, for light, for memory, and for the act of looking. Whether in the photographs themselves or in the accompanying assemblages, I hope to create spaces where both I and the viewer can slow down, breathe, and remain present with what is before us.
