Essays: Photomonitor

Over a few years I have developed a series of extended essays on the work of contemporary women artists working in the UK Published with Photomonitor. Although well known artists these women have not as yet had significant monographs published on their work and instead have had writing focussing on individual series. This has often led to women artists work being overlooked – these essays used my longstanding knowledge of their work to develop essays that would provide an overview on their work, picking up on ongoing themes and connecting across and between series of work.

Links to these can be found on their website: https://photomonitor.co.uk/essay/

They have included essays on:
Bettina von Zwehl : Made Up Love Song February 2012
Strange Encounters and the work of Anne Hardy July 2013
The performer emerges in the work of Sian Bonnell May 2014
Playing and reality in the work of E J Major June 2016
Gayle Chong Kwan: ‘Arripare’, 2013
The evolving relationship between an artist and the landscape in the work of Chrystel Lebas September 2016
The surreal in the work of Clare Strand February 2017
Elaine Duigenan: the universal seen in the everyday. December 2018


“An encounter with this installation is so much more than seeing one of Hardy’s previous works in progress. Perhaps it is this play with light, form, mass and shape that is so different. It is certainly an exhilarating experience to be so literally inside the work. This inclusion of sculpture does not mean that the artist has left photography behind. But it does represent a significant shift for her work, as Hardy has changed the relationship between her photographs and the constructions. To date the sculptures were made to produce a single image, but now they need several photographs to attempt to convey them. Equally the photographs had to describe and encapsulate the scene they were representing. Now the photograph and the sculpture have broken free of each other and can have their own independent voice.  It would seem in this process they have both been liberated and can now move freely into a world of new possibilities. “

The performer emerges in the work of Sian Bonnell May 2014
Playing and reality in the work of E J Major June 2016
Gayle Chong Kwan: ‘Arripare’, 2013
The evolving relationship between an artist and the landscape in the work of Chrystel Lebas September 2016
The surreal in the work of Clare Strand February 2017
Elaine Duigenan: the universal seen in the everyday. December 2018

https://photomonitor.co.uk/essay/