Fragments Of Belonging: Drawing It All Together

Month 5

​Fragments of Belonging is a long term painting and film project exploring ideas of place, belonging, and migration through everyday life, memory, and inherited histories. The project brings together studio practice, research, and time spent responding to specific locations and environments, allowing the work to develop slowly and through sustained attention.

January has marked a noticeable shift in the project.

Five months in, the work is moving from a more open, exploratory phase into one that feels increasingly focused. The earlier months were about gathering material and responding intuitively to history, memory, and environment as they surfaced. That period of openness was necessary, but it has gradually given way to a different kind of attention. As the project enters its final phase, I’m pleased to share that Fragments of Belonging will be presented as an exhibition this March at Rosehill Theatre in Whitehaven, opening on 24 March.

This month has been spent largely in the studio, working intensively on the triptych that will sit at the centre of the exhibition. These three connected paintings are where many of the project’s threads are now being tested against one another. Ideas around everyday life, inherited histories, and movement through landscapes shaped by migration are no longer sitting alongside each other, but beginning to interlock.

At this stage, the work is less about introducing new imagery and more about resolving relationships. Colour, tone, figures, and spatial structure are being adjusted and readjusted as the balance within each panel becomes clearer. It is a slower, more deliberate phase of making, one that requires patience and repeated looking rather than momentum. Decisions carry more weight now, because each change affects the whole.

Migration has remained a central concern throughout the project, not as a single narrative but as an underlying condition. It appears through the movement of people, the traces of history embedded in environments, and the way belonging is shaped over time rather than assumed. These ideas are becoming more embedded in the work, less stated and more held within the structure of the paintings themselves.

Alongside the painting, the film element of Fragments of Belonging is continuing to develop. This will take the form of a longer essay style film shown as part of the exhibition. January has been about clarifying its direction and overall structure, thinking carefully about pacing, voice, and how the film sits in dialogue with the paintings rather than simply explaining them.

As the project moves closer to its conclusion, the emphasis is shifting. There is less focus on generating new material and more on refining what already exists, making decisions, and allowing the work to settle into a coherent whole. This stage feels quieter but more demanding, asking for concentration rather than expansion.

Over the coming weeks I will be completing the triptych, continuing work on the film, and selecting a small group of supporting works for the exhibition. I will also begin sharing more about the exhibition itself as February unfolds.

At this point, the work feels close, but not finished. The task now is to stay with it, to trust the process of drawing it all together, and to see it through.