In November 2025 I was invited by Falmouth University’s Fine Art department to spend a month in residence at Gwithian Chapel, the last remaining thatched (and cob) Methodist chapel in Cornwall. During the residency I also spent time teaching second year BA Fine Art students in Falmouth, alongside St Ives’ based artist Naomi Frears.
Gwithian Chapel
I visited Trinity House’s maintenance station at St Just. Trinity House is:
‘a charity dedicated to safeguarding shipping and seafarers, providing education, support and welfare to the seafaring community with a statutory duty as a General Lighthouse Authority to deliver a reliable, efficient and cost-effective aids to navigation service for the benefit and safety of all mariners.’
Godrevy Lighthouse
I was generously hosted in a cabin lashed by the wind and rain outside, and tea and paperwork within. Unable to leave by helicopter, the engineering team showed me around warehouses of doubled-up spares, spares of spares and spares of those.
Their manager had grown up in St Just - the son of a miner. I considered the cycles of blackness beneath coastal seas reflecting cycles of light from white towers high above them, the pounding sea a threat to both.
Images taken at Trinity House’s maintenance station
I left the engineers waiting for clearer skies and drove back to the chapel where I began painting thin metal panels with glossy line drawings of lighthouses (they crashed like thunder when they were moved).
Once they were dry I folded them up.
Open studio at the end of my residency at Gwithian Chapel
Open studio at the end of my residency at Gwithian Chapel
