I love the Twitter Community

Part of this commission from Kent Architecture was about meaningfully engaging with a ‘community’. I am based in Warwickshire, and the project is based in the Medway Towns. This is how I work, physically going to places, researching and exploring them, and creating the work there – and then back in my studio. I had recently started exploring using Twitter and was fascinated by it. I wanted to see if using Twitter for this project would develop my practice in any way. Hence, I decided to tweet every day, for 70 days, my ‘Maps of the Day’. These 70 days with the Twitter community have been an absolute joy. I have found them to be welcoming, engaging, thought-provoking and fun. I have had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with some of them, to met people at parties and then become part of their daily lives, and to re-connect with people from past projects. In browsing through my Twitter feed last night, someone had retweeted something and a name caught my eye. A name from the past, from 1997 in fact, a year after I had graduated as a mature fine artist. Nancy Proctor. Nancy had written an online piece about my first major project, ‘Only Connect’, commissioned by the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. I had lost that link, thanks to Twitter and reconnecting with Nancy this morning, I have it back, and have been reflecting upon the journey of my artistic practice, and the communities i have worked with in the interverning 15 years.  http://www.pinkink.net/newart/oc.htm