The Dad Directives, 2008
-Framed inkjet prints and text
Selected Projects
Missing You Already! 2021
Anteriors 2, 2021
An Introduction to Laughter Yoga, 2017 onwards
Radical Essex / #aNaturistClubInEssex, 2016 onwards
Sauna Reading Group, 2016 onwards
Activity (& Inactivity) Sheet, 2017
That's As Maybe, 2016
Various Brackets, 2008-18
A Sculpture I Once Saw... 2010-
"It must be told" (Again), 2014
I'm At This Inverse Eve Or I'm, 2014
A Hermit's Movie IV: In Trees, 2011
Late at Tate (I am not him and I do not have your pen), 2011
Mirrors from Somewhere Else, 2011 onwards
Portrait Session (Borrowed Instruments I Cannot Play), 2010
Impersonating a Part-time PCSO, 2007-10
Image: 'Dad Directives #5 (Hi Dad, Take a photography of something you don't understand)'
One of a series of projects devised and completed whilst on a six week residency at Platform in Vaasa on the west coast of Finland.
For 'The Dad Directives' - my only collaboration with my father, a keen amateur photographer - I would email him each weekend from my residency flat in Vaasa, Finland, with a different instruction to take a photograph, each one selected from a long-list of potential instructions I would write throughout the week. He was free to interpret them however he wanted, but choose only one final image, then print it using his new A3 printer. He would then send them out to me when the set of six was complete. Once the prints arrived they were inserted to the six numbered A3 box frames I had prepared.
The project was run under strict conditions so my father and I never discussed it until after all the prints had arrived by post, just a few days prior to the exhibition opening.
1. 'Hi Dad, Go outside after dark and photograph any house with a window you can see someone through.'
2. Hi Dad, take a photograph of a photograph you wish you had taken.'
3. ‘Hi Dad, Build something from scrap wood in the garage, paint it with left-over paint, give it eyes. Then photograph it.'
4. ‘Hi Dad, Collect together as many things you can find that you've been given as presents. Pile them up and photograph with a strong flash.'
5. ‘Hi Dad, Take a photograph of something you don't understand.'
6. ‘Hi Dad, What is the heaviest thing you can lift in the house? Take it out into the garden and photograph it.
Above: The Dad Directives installed in Plymouth Arts Centre, UK, for the solo exhibition Recreate A Nervy Pistol (An Early Retrospective), 2011
You can listen to a recording of a public event where my father and I discuss the project HERE.