Art with Purpose | Supporting TDAS & Survivors of Domestic Abuse

I am a multidisciplinary artist currently studying Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University. My practice explores language, ritual and power structures, focusing on how words become embedded within everyday behaviour, relationships and social systems. Through installation, ceramics, sound, text and painting, I investigate the psychological and cultural impact of language, particularly within domestic and institutional spaces.

After leaving a long corporate career, I became increasingly aware of the ways language is used to undermine, dismiss and control women, often through behaviours so normalised they pass unnoticed. Discovering text-based art transformed the direction of my practice and led me to explore how fragments of everyday speech can carry emotional, political and social weight far beyond the moment they are spoken.  My partnership with Trafford Domestic Abuse Services has become an important part of this research. Through spending time with women in refuges and support groups, I have gathered real-world language connected to coercive control, emotional abuse and misogyny. Rather than rewriting or sanitising these experiences, I work directly with the words shared with me, allowing the honesty and complexity of those voices to remain present within the work. These fragments are recontextualised through domestic objects and immersive installations that reflect the spaces where much of this behaviour occurs.

At the centre of my practice is the tension between familiarity and discomfort. Many of the works initially appear decorative, domestic or even comforting, but closer inspection reveals unsettling language and underlying psychological tension. I am interested in how audiences navigate that shift, and how their own social relationship to the subject matter influences what they see, ignore, accept or challenge.  Rather than presenting fixed conclusions, my work aims to create spaces for reflection and dialogue around the ways language shapes behaviour, power and lived experience. By supporting TDAS through donations, you help extend this work beyond the gallery, funding specialist support, safe spaces and practical resources for women affected by domestic abuse.