PORTFOLIO
Based in Folkestone on England's south coast and originally from the working-class town of Burnley in Lancashire, I am a conceptual, lens-based artist whose practice explores identity, authenticity and belonging through photography and moving image. I completed an MA in Photography at Falmouth University in 2023, and my work has been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions.
Drawing on lived experience, my practice examines the subtle ways we adapt, perform and reshape ourselves in response to social expectations, relationships and systems of power. I'm interested in the often small and unseen ways we make micro-adjustments to our internal sense of self to become the versions of ourselves that we present to the world in search of acceptance, safety or connection.
Visually, my work often borrows the familiar language of magazines, social media and family archives. Beneath these recognisable surfaces, however, the images quietly disrupt expectations, inviting viewers to question assumptions about identity, memory and what we accept as normal.
PERSONAL PROJECTS REFLECTING ON IDENTITY, THE FEMALE GAZE AND MOTHERHOOD
My art is for and about The Female Gaze. My practice interrogates what it is to be a woman, a mother, a neurodivergent human and a lover of women.
My work seeks to explore the ever-shifting and fluid boundaries between who we feel we are in any one moment and the parts of ourselves we conceal or change in order to feel both a sense of belonging and safety.
2023
2023
2022
2022
ARTIST STATEMENT
All the little ways, unwritten and unspoken
that we silently alter who we are.
"to be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted And confined space..... a woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From the earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continuallY.
She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as success in her life. Her own sense of being is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another"
"Men survey women before treating them. Consequently, how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. To acquire some control over this process, women must contain it and interiorize it."
"Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women Watch themselves beinG looked at"
John BErger. Ways of seeing
My work responds to the confusions and contradictions of life, turning them into free-flowing, evolving ideas and conversations that can perhaps enhance our understanding of ourselves and each other.
Creativity can help to synthesise ideas and lead to a better understanding of feelings, embodied knowing and wisdom. It is a method of exploring my own truth, bringing it into the light so I can see it more clearly.
Everyone perceives things differently, even if only slightly. When creative work is shared, what the viewer reflects back in their response will perhaps contain something we haven't seen about our own experience. A new insight, a different view, an expansion of our picture of reality. Art becomes a form of discovery; a relationship and a conversation that can awaken a thought, idea or emotional response in the viewer.
It is a way in which we can reach out, from the illusion of separation, and reaffirm our essential connections with one another.
The sharing aspect of creative expression enriches us in a different way than the actual creation. Creating this work has changed me and my perspectives and I expect it shall change me again when it is shared.
PERSONAL PROJECTS REFLECTING ON
THE FEMALE GAZE
AND MOTHERHOOD
These bodies of work explore Motherhood, including the cultural expectations and the lived experience of being a mother raising a girl in a world where so many gender norms are internalised, even for the most feminist thinking amongst us.
2022
2021
2021
2021
CONTACT ME
LOCATION: FOLKESTONE, KENT CT19
ADELES STUDIO
Copyrights ©ADELES STUDIO 2025
ALONGSIDE MY CREATIVE WORK, I'M CURRENTLY LECTURING IN HIGHER EDUCATION ON THE ART & BUSINESS COURSE AT CANTERBURY COLLEGE.
YOU CAN GET IN TOUCH WITH ME ON THE ABOVE EMAIL ADDRESS FOR ALL THINGS! I CHECK IT REGULARLY. IF YOU DON'T HEAR BACK FROM ME CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDER.