Damien works with digital and found media, drawing on free-media principles, mixing “low” with high-tech equipment and strategies. She re-purposes and recycles found and donated materials, exploring the technology we use and discard, and the content it conveys. Working with actual and virtual materials, she often collaborates with other artists and - through socially engaged projects - the wider public.
Her work was originally print-based 3D; often based on children’s stories and toys, it has been shown in venues as diverse as phone boxes and the National Art Library. From 1998 she increasingly used digital techniques, allowing her to explore media often inaccessible to her and other D/deaf people. Works include De@fsite for the Photographers Gallery, Aerial (x-space commission for inIVA), Songbird, (sonic/acoustic work developed through a LabCulture Residency and exhibited as part of ‘Re:Thinking Time’), and AWSoM, the Ambient Weather Sound Machine (with Stuart Bowditch) shown at a range of sites including Banff NMI.
Other sonic and digital collaborations with Stuart Bowditch include Vibe³ (commissioned by ECC and shown across Essex) Vibe³C (commissioned for Outside09), Vibe Cube Southend for TAP Gallery, 'Automatic Listening', (commissioned by FirstSite), supporting Peter Cusack's 'Favourite Sounds' project at the Digital Exploration Centre (DEC), Georingtones, a 'Sparks Will Fly...' commission, and Signpost, shown at Village Green 2010 and Artside 2011, and most recently as co-lead artists for the Rochford Art Collector Series. Solo projects include the Scanography series commission at Barking Hospital, 'Chimerascope' (commissioned for Essex 2012 Legacy), Sundrown, the Lost Property Office (for Metal's "On the Line" programme), HOFS-Centric, part of the Hadleigh in Place programme (for ACAVA), and "A Map of the Isle of Dogs" for Bow Arts Education.
Previously a Creative Partnerships practitioner, with a post-graduate qualification from the Institute of Education, she regularly designs and facilitates education and participatory projects for age-specific and inter-generational initiatives in galleries, educational, and community settings. In 2014 she piloting the WYWH? digital workshops for West Berkshire Council (returning in 2015), and was one of three artists in residence for the QEOP Summer School partnership managed by Space Studios and the Legacy List. Projects in 2015 included the River Crouch Festival (April-July '15), and leading the visual arts element of Random Dance Company's programme for "Schools (not quite out)..." at QEOP, and creative workshops for NDCS's "Helping Hands" programme, a peer support scheme for deaf young people. From September 2015-October 2016, she was a Lead Artist/Research Practitioner on the Open Estate programme for Studio 3 Arts, and developed school-based projects for Bow Arts in Battersea, Poplar, and the Isle of Dogs. She is a regular contributor to Focal Point Gallery's Education programme; Bronze (and now Silver) Arts Award leader, plus a regular session leader to their Saturday Art Club and innovative Family Art Days.
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News
May 2017 - My contribution to the intriguing project "In Pursuit of Error" can be found here - The Harbinger project Isle of Dogs map is featured in the Bow Arts article The Art of the Island. Jan 2017 - The Vibe Cube recordings we donated to Essex Record Office are now up on the archive's soundcloud page Nov 2016 - The lovely Ray Morgan interviews me for Trawler Magazine. Sept - Open Estate Festival launches Sat 17 September, following 18 months of community-led creative activity, conversation and research. More information here May - Showing new work in Feast of Fools - events and exhibition at TAP gallery, & back at FPG for Family Arts Day April - Open Estate Spring Celebration 9 April at the Living Museum March - Half term at the Living Museum |
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