Living in a rural location in the Scottish Highlands means I’m used to working in isolation. This isolation has its challenges and its advantages too. When the low residency week in London came around, I wasn’t quite prepared for what it would feel like to be in a room with people who care about the same things I do. This is a pretty unusual experience for me.
There’s a lot I could write about that week. The cohort, the show, the workshops. But what’s stayed with me most is something quieter than all of that.
When I arrived to hang the work, I brought my sister Kirsty into the building. She’s my collaborator on the piece we were showing, Soft System. She works full time as a teacher and most of our process had been conversations, voice notes, a digital book we made together. This was the first time she’d been into Central St. Martins.
There weren’t many people around yet when we got there. And I noticed Betty Leung standing in the room, looking at the work.
What struck me, was the way she was doing it. She was completely still. Taking her time in a way that I really hadn’t seen many people do. Not moving on. Not glancing. Not rushing. She seemed to be really absorbing the work from a place of absolute focus and stillness. It was extraordinary to watch the process.
When I spoke to Betty later, I noticed she had that same quality in conversation. Of really listening and absorbing what I was saying, before responding.
What I saw Betty embody in person was something I’ve been trying to articulate in my own practice over the last year.
I’ve written a lot here about witness versus capture. About the difference between receiving an image and taking it. About the value of slow, receptive looking over the hungry-ghost impulse to grab and hold. And there was Betty, living that out so naturally it looked effortless.
Seeing it in another person did something unexpected. It wasn’t just validating. It was clarifying. It made me realise that what I’m reaching for in my practice isn’t an abstract idea. It’s an actual way of being in front of work. A physical discipline. You can see it when someone has it.
Later that day, while I was stressing about where to hang my three pieces, Betty did something I would never have thought of myself. She took me up to the library and made photocopies of the work, scaled down, so we could move them around and test configurations without ever touching the originals. Such a simple thing. But it was the same principle made practical: don’t rush. Don’t make a rash decision from a place of anxiety. Create the conditions for a good decision.
We had a conversation about the frames I’d brought, which I wasn’t sure why I’d brought. They looked too formal when we tried them, a bit suffocating. But Betty said something that has been turning in me ever since: with the frame over it, she said, I’m reading it more as a drawing than a photograph.
In that sentence, she captured something I’ve been thinking about in my photogravure practice for months.. The photograph that reads as a drawing, the surface that asks you to look differently. Betty named it just like that, standing in front of my work from the place of slow attention she naturally inhabits.
We also went to the Crypt Gallery, and I walked around with Betty for a while. What struck me about being with her in that space was that she already knew my practice, my materials, my interests, and that changed the quality of the conversation completely. It wasn’t introductory. We could go straight to the work. She was pointing out vessels made by a student, talking about how the space itself was doing something to them, how the architecture and atmosphere were contributing to what those pieces meant. Not as an afterthought but as active material. The Crypt was working with the work.
The atmosphere of that place was unique. It wasn’t formal, but everything had been placed with real consideration. Someone rushed in with a radiator to keep us warm. There was incense burning. Soft seats. I hadn’t experienced that in a gallery before, and if I hadn’t, I think I would have kept assuming that sterility was the serious option, that warmth and formality were opposites. They’re not. The Crypt felt completely considered and completely human at the same time. The work could breathe in it.I think what the week taught me is that the values I’m developing in my practice aren’t separate from how I want to be as an artist in a community. Being still enough to actually look. Listening before speaking. Creating conditions where things can breathe rather than be pinned down with formality.