Since May last year (yes, last year!), I’ve been part of the 2024/25 The Other MA (TOMA) cohort — and in February, we held our first group show: REJECT, REFLECT, RECLAIM at The Beecroft Art Gallery. (All photography by Tessa Hallmann)
Reject Reflect Reclaim
Reject Reflect Reclaim invites visitors to critically engage with, and rethink, the narratives preserved within the Beecroft Art Gallery’s permanent collection.
Responding to selected works from the gallery’s archive of more than 2,000 pieces, we interrogated the collection and its notable absences. Our works sought to shine a light on overlooked voices and untold histories.
It was a real honour to be part of this show — and, as my TOMA experience has taught me time and again, to be among such excellent company in my talented cohort.
Aftermath
My piece for the show was an installation called Aftermath.
I responded to Percy Delf-Smith’s etching Thiepval after the Battles from the Beecroft collection.
My installation explores the desolation and fragility that war continues to inflict on both landscapes and the human spirit.
Aftermath is a meditation on violence, humanity’s destructive instincts, and the uncomfortable gap between the glorified rhetoric of conflict and the grim realities it leaves behind.
Constructed from manipulated paper artworks, the installation uses paper primed with chicory — a coffee substitute consumed in the trenches of the First World War — and softened with body lotion, creating a pliable surface for layered narratives.
Over this conditioned paper, black ink and ink powder are applied using an array of improvised tools: branches, feathers, teasels, ink-can pens, and traditional brushes. These evoke the environmental textures of Delf-Smith’s original work and nod to his use of gramophone needles in the etching process.
A Desecrated, Raw Landscape
The piece is also influenced by Jeremy Deller’s It is What It Is, where he toured a car destroyed in Iraq across the US. I wanted, in a similar spirit, to capture the destruction and brutality born in the ‘theatre of war’ — in a still, silent way.
The marks I created form painted landscapes, fragmented body forms, and cryptic asemic texts — visual elements that resist easy interpretation, mirroring the distortion of truth and meaning in war rhetoric and propaganda.
Layers of chicory and ink powder disrupt and transform earlier landscape compositions, creating a charred, decaying effect.
Nestled within the wreckage are my small, delicate paper sculptures — cadaver-like forms that embody vulnerability and the ephemeral nature of life. Shaped through folding, tearing, and wrapping, these fragile constructs are a visceral exploration of myth-making, misrepresentation, and the fractured ‘truths’ perpetuated during conflict.
Through its raw materiality, Aftermath invites viewers to reflect on the intersections of memory, destruction, and humanity’s struggle to reconcile past violence with present realities.
My Artist Colleagues
It would be remiss of me not to highlight some of my fellow artists’ incredible work. Every piece in the show was remarkable and thought-provoking. I’m sorry I can’t share everyone’s here, but here are just a few very edited highlights.
The show runs from February until 11th May 2025 — plenty of time to visit if you haven’t already.
About TOMA
TOMA is an artist-run education model and exhibition programme based in Southend-on-Sea. It supports artists who have faced barriers accessing traditional art education and the broader ‘art world’. Through education programmes, exhibitions, and public events, TOMA fosters a friendly and inclusive space for the Southend community to learn, engage, and create.