Selfscapes refers to the relationship between self and its environment and is a research cluster at York St John University. The aims of this research cluster is to investigate both the body and place as sites for interconnected experiences and how this might be mediated through a range of media.

I was one of the invited artists taking part in 2 events in Dalby Forest in 2018, a day of presentations by the invited artists and an exhibition.

Outcomes include 3 mono prints and a video that conflates my experience of spending a few hours in Dalby Forest and a past memory of being marched with my sister around a lake in silence by my mother when we were children. We thought she was angry, but actually she was bitterly disappointed and upset. The sound track includes a short, poetic narrative read by myself which begins: “This is not the lake my mother marched me and my sister round…”

Our approach involves both semiotic and phenomenological considerations and focuses on themes of embodied landscape, self and surroundings, self as narrative, self and body and creative practice as research.

  • How does environment shape individuals? And vice versa?
  • How do we interact with our environments? How is our experience of environment influenced by cultural conventions of perception? Are we distanced or experience them as embodied?
  • How is the formation of self influenced by the close relationships with the family system? What happens when the body is perceived as the environment for self? How is our experience of environment mediated by our bodies