Freeland Fellowship
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AUGUST 2026
I have spent some time away from the university in August, as well as finishing bits in the studio, talking to the MA students about their upcoming exhibition, and doing the repetitive task of making lake pigment and slip casting.
These processes aren’t intrinsically intertwined, but they both hold the same timeframe: doing something, then waiting, then doing something else, and then waiting again. They seem to work really well alongside each other and feel like a more productive and efficient way of working, even though both are incredibly laborious tasks.
August has also been a time to start evaluating what I’ve been making and to really think about the exhibition, which is in February. Even though I’m aware that February is still quite far away, I’m keen to try to push the exhibition beyond the gallery space at the Michael Pennie Gallery at Locksbrook Campus. I think there is scope to do this, but we need to get the ball rolling with other organisations or locations as soon as possible.
The main thing I’ve become mildly obsessed with in August is a directional speaker that I came across in an exhibition in Marseille. It’s not particularly important that the exhibition was in Marseille, or even in France, but the speaker itself is French and uses ultrasonic waves rather than normal sound waves to direct the audio. This means the sound can be incredibly directional, and I’ve never really experienced anything quite like it before.
This led to a bit of a deep dive into the technology. I ended up visiting a directional speaker specialist in Chippenham, where I was able to listen to lots of different types of directional speakers and get a much better understanding of what is actually possible with the technology. So, while I might not necessarily end up using the French speaker that initially caught my attention, I’ve definitely expanded my knowledge of this new technology and the possibilities it might offer.
I’ve also been trying to convince the university that they might need these speakers for their own technical and AV departments, while looking into how I could rent one or potentially buy one through my budget.
As I’ve been doing lots of writing alongside my making during the fellowship, I feel like an audio work could fit really well with this new technology. It’s opened up another possibility for how the writing could exist within the exhibition, and I’m interested in seeing where that might take me. -
JULY 2026
My obsession with rubbish has continued to grow, particularly around the way it moves through buildings before eventually disappearing from view. I’ve been researching rubbish chutes and collecting photographs of them, becoming increasingly fascinated by their strange architectural aesthetics and the simple pleasure of the slide. This has got me thinking about ladders and slides as complementary forms: one takes you up, the other brings you down.
Underneath this, I’ve been thinking more about what it means to purge something. There is a particular emotional feeling attached to taking something to the tip and throwing it away. To discard. To release. It’s a physical act, but it can also feel strangely cleansing or final. This has started to connect back to my first visits to the Roman Baths, and to the baths as places of purging, cleansing and healing. I’m interested in where these different forms of disposal and purification overlap, and I think this might be becoming the crux of the exhibition later in the year.
This thinking has been running alongside my continued exploration and skilling up with screen printing. I made my largest screen print so far, using four screens layered over one another with the lake pigments I’ve been developing. The mottled quality of the pigments becomes particularly visible when they are printed in larger blocks, which is very satisfying. I’ve also been testing their lightfastness and discovered that, as expected, they are going to fade in sunlight as the UV degrades the pigment. Rather than seeing this as a problem, I’m quite enjoying the idea that the image will slowly disappear through its own material qualities. I’ve now also made an iron oak gall pigment, which I know will do the opposite: it is incredibly stable and lightfast. I’m looking forward to playing around with this next term and seeing what happens when these two very different pigments sit alongside each other.
I’ve also been learning new ways of working with paper and fabric. I learnt bookbinding, which has been particularly satisfying as I’ve been working with writing more during the fellowship. There is something about the precision of folding and sewing paper that I really enjoy, and I’m beginning to think about how writing might become an artwork in itself rather than simply being contained within one. I’ve also learnt how to screen print onto fabric, as I’m starting to think about uniforms for a performance that is slowly brewing in the background.
This interest in looking and perspective also came into my first workshop at the university’s summer school for 13–16-year-olds. We made periscopes, playing with the idea of seeing from somewhere you normally couldn’t. I’m hoping to develop this further next year with the new Fine Art students, using it as a starting point for thinking about different ways of looking, shifting perspectives and experiencing space. -
JUNE 2026
One of the more ridiculous things I’ve made this month is a very large ladder out of recycled timber. I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the skips around Locksbrook Campus and the university’s systems of waste and reuse. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the skips, but realised that what I actually want to do is see what’s inside them. So I made myself a wonderful umpire’s chair, allowing me to climb up and look down into the skip. It feels like a useful way of physically positioning myself within this obsession with rubbish and circular systems, and gives me a much better view of what is actually being thrown away.
This interest in materials and transformation has been running alongside my experiments with making lake pigments. I’ve been collecting common plants from around the campus, including willow from the river, nettles, elder and St John’s wort, and turning them into natural pigments. The results have been surprisingly varied. The willow, for example, produced a beautiful terracotta red, which we weren’t expecting. I’ve been taking these pigments into screen printing, making my own egg tempera rather than using acrylic, in keeping with the Sustainable Manifesto.
The images I’ve been printing are mostly lions, which connects to my research into Ancient Rome and Cybele, the Magna Mater, who is often depicted flanked by two lions. I’ve been stripping these images back until only one lion remains and printing them using the pigments I’ve made, sometimes incorporating ash. There’s an interesting mottled quality to the pigments and I want to make a large screen print that shows off the array of colours I’ve been making. This process is painstakingly laborious and, in order to get the pigment through the screen, I have to do a lot of grinding and sieving. But I am a sucker for long processes!
I’ve been thinking more expansively about disappearance, which was one of my key research questions, and I keep coming back to the question: if disappearance had a sound, what would it be? A cymbal crash feels like a strangely poetic answer, so I reached out to Matt Nolan, a UK cymbal smith who serendipitously works in Bath, to talk more about the fabrication and history of cymbals. I’ve also been growing (with a lot of help from the amazing grading team at BSU) some clæpsias, which look remarkably like beaters and could potentially be used for playing cymbals.
June also saw the completion of the work with Marianne Mulvey for WITTA entitled Under Ash Beds at Spike Island, following the writing and conversations I mentioned in my previous post. The work became a materialisation of that imagined process of burning the timber and transforming it into something else. I also took part in Open a Book, a group exhibition in North Wales curated by the wonderful Short and Forward -
APRIL & MAY 2026
Time is flying. Spring has exploded and summer is here. It’s a pattern I recognise and yet still find surprising every year.
Too many things have happened at the University to fully regale, but I feel far more accustomed to its ebbs and flows now. Something I wasn’t expecting was the rhythm of the academic timeline. I haven’t been in an institutional educational space for a long time, and I’d forgotten the intensity of semesters, deadlines and term breaks. I realise now how much this shapes the fellowship.
There have been weeks where the University has been unbelievably busy: students needing help, technicians and tutors stretched thin, deadlines everywhere. Then, almost overnight, the building shifts into a kind of surreal quietness. As the Fellow, I get to witness the breathing of this community, the way it pulses and contracts.
All the other fellows from Dundee, Aberdeen, Cardiff, Falmouth, Brighton, Birmingham and Belfast visited Bath Spa for a get together with tutors and academics. It was super nice to meet everyone and useful to get a snapshot of how different practices might unfold over the fellowship. We did a rapid-fire talk about our practice and pedagogy and sweet screen printing workshop. I always appreciate doing something practical in these sort of scenarios.
Locally, I’ve been visiting more institutions around Bath. I went to the Herschel Museum, dedicated to William and Caroline Herschel and their discoveries of Uranus and comets. I also visited the Museum of Bath at Work, which feels like a compression of archival and architectural histories folded surprisingly into a old indoor tennis court. I attended the opening of a Glen Brown exhibition at No.1 Royal Crescent, revisited the Holburne, and even managed to preview parts of Fringe Arts Bath.
I feel I have become more ingrained and have managed to spend time with a wide breadth of the student cohort in various supporting roles. Ideas are bubbling for workshops that I want to test out, and I am still managing to skill up across the various workshops, although I realise that repetition is the key to learning, so I have been revisiting various techniques.
The refined list currently stands at: embossing, screen printing, making natural pigments, a bit of metalwork, tufting, slip casting, digital print processes, 3D printing (including learning Rhino), using the recycled plastic extruder, growing plants, projection mapping and lathing (although I should definitely do more of that!). There is still more I want to test out and, soon, I will start refining things down, but for the moment I will carry on with this slightly hectic self-led education.
Due to this slightly chaotic (self-chosen) way of working, my ideas are bouncing around in lots of different directions. I have been diving into Roman cults, the history of the cymbal, amphoras, rubbish dumps, sites of construction, growing plants to (maybe) use within a sculpture, and of course the familiar fascinations with recycled materials, alchemy, destruction, temporary works and sustainability.
I am trying to give myself some time to evaluate the topics that I keep coming back to, to see if I can distil my practice into a succinct narrative. But I think this is neither an easy task nor completely essential for now. As an old tutor once said, “Let pleasure be your guide,” and that is what I am trying to do.
PAST
Outside of the fellowship, I recently completed an external project with Left Handed Giant and Spike Island, producing a beer label featuring imagery from previous works relating to Alewives and alestaffs. It feels like a wonderfully poignant outcome after an entire body of work made around brewing history.
More info here: jolathwood.co.uk/artworks/spike-island-x-lhg/
FUTURE
Alongside all of this, I’ve been developing a new work with curator Marianne Mulvey for an event hosted by WITTA at Spike Island. We’ve been thinking about how things can be talked into existence and are applying this idea to a text which facilitates writing an artwork into existence.
For a while I’ve been considering how the reuse of timber functions within my art practice. There is normally a pile of lumber in my studio which I’ve worked with repeatedly over the years. Many pieces are now exhausted: shortened lengths, drilled holes, cracks and layers of old labels. It feel right to purge myself of them but doesn’t feel right to simply burn them without purpose.
A while back, I voiced the idea of burning them and using them as fuel in a wood-powered ceramic kiln transferring their stored energy into another material. This has partly led me into learning slip casting, although I’m not sure it matters whether I make the ceramics themselves or other do. I’m more interested in the transformation itself: one material exhausting itself so another can emerge.
Marianne and I have been writing around this process and imagining what conditions are needed for it to exist. That writing has now become a new work, which will be presented on the 27th June at WAWAW / Writing Art Writing Art Writing: When Language Becomes Material.
More info here: witta.org/news/wawaw-writing-art-writing-art-writing/
Soundtrack - Akira (1988) movie soundtrack
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MARCH 2026
Short form/ a summary
I dance across the workshops, selecting apparatus that I haven’t used before. Learning though making not looking or talking,. Problems will arise that you can’t theorise. The privilege of workshops with wonderful technicians with specialist knowledge.
Long form / Freeform
I am delighted to receive this amazing opportunity for the next year, and I feel both humbled and overwhelmed by the freedom and possibility of spending time back in art school, surrounded by its nostalgic smells, messy works, failures, successes, and, above all, the space for experimentation.
My time here will be split between the studio, skilling up in the amazing workshops and pedagogy. I want to learn more about the holistic ecosystem of the art school, and hope to help students better understand the art world beyond the institution. I have coined my approach to this time as: 'Preparing to become invisible, a deep dive into circle systems, sustainability, and transformation.'
I have spent these first few weeks inducting myself into the workshops and making without the pressure of worrying about what it means or where it will lead. My current approach is to let each induction feed the next. I am trying to develop new skills, so I am purposely focusing on technologies and materials that I haven’t really worked with since I was at Brighton University in 2006, even though I know I will inevitably return to the comfort of the wood and sculpture workshops.
First up was a simple exercise to understand embossing, a perfect medium to explore the concept of the invisible. Searching for words that weren’t too obvious, I settled on 'abracadabra.' Associated, for me, with magic tricks, and for a younger generation, with Lady Gaga (!), it felt like a good way forward. It was an extra delight to discover through further research that the etymology of the word dates back to 2nd-century Roman origins, linked to an amulet for curing fevers. This resulted in a more complete artwork than originally planned, but that is fine. I am sure this insignia will resurface throughout my time here.
I did a slip-casting induction and became fascinated by plaster discs that form when students accidentally mix too much plaster. These delightful forms, squashed between two sheets of toughened glass, offer a pristinely smooth canvas. I took one back to the studio.
On a rainy day, I missed my correct train and instead travelled straight to the centre of Bath. On a whim, I visited the Roman Baths. As a Bristolian, I remember going there as a child, but recall little detail. I was beyond delighted when I discovered I could visit for free with my new status as a Research Fellow. I got an audio guide and, somewhat nerdily, listened to every part of the tour. I learned a new word, ‘penannular’, used to describe a form with a small break in its circumference. Somehow, an almost complete ring feels more fitting than the perfection of a whole circle. I wished the spa was still a spa, not a museum. I accept that Roman history will infiltrate my ideas (it is literally in the water) especially given the connection to 'abracadabra.'
I was inducted on a recycled plastic hopper and reformer, an odd-looking machine that chomps and shreds used plastic into flakes, which are then heated and extruded into new, multicoloured swirling forms. A selection of simple moulds was available, but I used this opportunity to challenge myself to make my own. The mould needed to be strong and heat-resistant, so I also undertook an induction in the metal workshop. I was gifted some aluminium and used various tools to make an expanded mould held together with bolts. I decided to be practical and designed a simple extruded 'J' shape that I can repurpose as a hanging system to hold the aforementioned plaster discs on the wall.
I took part in a natural ink-making workshop and expanded my understanding of pigment-making beyond the familiar black of oak gall ink. I have always wanted to learn about egg tempera, and this workshop planted some ideas.
I learned how to use a wood lathe with the aim of making a pattern form for my first slip cast.
I made sketches of the skips in the university yard. I learned that Bath’s recycling centre is just a 15-minute walk from campus, and I think I should visit in the future, as it will apparently be expanding this year.
I also began to evaluate what interests me as an artist through a process developed by LOW PROFILE called the 'Holding Pen’ , a way for artists to organise their ideas and better understand what motivates them. I have been thinking a lot about the well-known idea that the essence of sculpture is a method of subtraction or addition. From there, I started reflecting on how I respond to sites, and realised that the ones I am most drawn to align with this sculptural thinking, sites of addition, like construction sites, and sites of subtraction, like mines. Industrial spaces and processes, with scale. The recycling centre seems, in some way, to hold both addition and extraction.
These seeds of ideas are growing, but it feels sporadic at the moment. I am also still nurturing some older works to be presented in new forms next month. This is probably enough insight for now.
Soundtrack - Modeselektor: DJ-Kicks album -
PRE-AMBLE
In late 2025, I applied for the Freelands Studio Fellowship at Bath Spa University (2026–27). Weary of the standard presentation format, I chose instead to write the Locksbrook campus a love letter
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A love letter to Bath Spa University.
