Doing & Undoing Islands began as a collaboration with Tom Lovelace and Emily Ryalls following a Creative England funded mentorship in 2022. The two artists connected on themes of land, body, and home.
This collaborative work exists in the space between photography and performance, bringing together live image making and ephemeral, photographic explorations of the land. Unfolding as a visual conversation, the artists share notions of home and their relationship with the landscape using the raw materials of light, paper and movement as performance materials.
With Ryalls working in Wakefield and Lovelace based in London (growing up in the Fens), the two began to use artist practice as research to consider the space in-between. These initial performance studies, informed the first staging of Doing & Undoing Islands, at Photo50 London Art Fair 2022.
Doing & Undoing Islands was then further developed and restaged with a wider net of collaborating performers at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in September 2023.