I use the word Fieldwork as a process of research and art production, generated from an anthropological position.

I have been participating on various skill-based courses to extend my knowledge and experience of the material world, and different mind – hand – material – environment negotiations by participating on skill based courses including: 

Fish knife skills

Taxidermy 

Baking

Bread-making

Butchery

Sushi cookery

Basket weaving

Pot throwing

Experimental Ceramics

Fishing

Shoe making

Glassblowing

Blacksmithing

Dress making 

Jewellery making 

Weaving

Cheese making

chocolate work

Patisserie

Bee keeping

Pizza making

I am interested in initiating discussions with others around making and handling – how we learn/extend knowledge through ‘hands-on doing’ and how skills are acquired (eg. copying others actions, talking to one another as we learn and looking at visual aids – U-tube demonstrations and printed instructions), how we experience and understand our environment and bodies through using material and our hands/body, relationships between material, hand and cognition, and the rich experience of understanding the world through direct hands on engagement.

The experience of these taught activities I have share with galleries and other institutions to take this fieldwork beyond my own experience and to share with others. E.g. A project with Raven Row and the RCA running a session: ‘what it means to handle stuff – auto-pedagogy – a course in butchery’. This included a presentation about my practice with a discussion around the notion of making and skills: what it means to learn a skill and to deskill, the environment we learn in, the groups we learn with and skills we can access both as an amateur and a professional. This was followed by a course in butchery lead by a professional butcher who taught us (myself, gallery director and the fine art students) butchery techniques in pork and poultry. 

This DIWO (doing it with others) I continue to explore, working with students and local communities, to set up groups to engage in different skills delivered by local professionals, and to extend the experience through discussion.