My work in this Exhibition is primarily documentary photography surrounding the themes of travel, adventure, and friendship. I have tried to present these photographs as a seamless piece of exhibition which speaks for itself, and shows people interacting with their environments in various ways, however if you’d like to know more about the three projects this work is born out of, you may read on here:

The first project explores the theme of the freedom and exhilaration you get by travelling with a motorcycle. I spent a year restoring an old 1970’s motorcycle with my younger brother after it had spent 20 years under a tarpaulin in a garden in Kent. We stripped down everything and repaired it from the ground up, leaving no stone unturned in restoring it to its former glory. When this task was completed, I used the bike for a year to travel between Brighton and my hometown in Somerset, putting on thousands of miles. Last summer I ventured further afield, spending weeks upon weeks on the road as I ventured down through France, Switzerland, Andorra and Spain before a faulty exhaust valve snapped at the head, blowing a hole clean through my piston and putting an end to my trip. After being stuck on a pig farm in Catalonia for a week, rescue came from an amazing and unexpected source, and I managed to pack my motorcycle into the back of a VW Polo and drive it back to England. Chronicled here are photographs which I took on this trip, of the restoration process, and of the amazing person who came to the rescue when I had nowhere else to go. Displayed here is also the original piston from this motorcycle with the damage from the snapped exhaust valve. As a side note, I have since repaired the motorcycle and it lives on, still haunting the roads of Somerset to this day.

The second project explores the amazing eclectic world of rock climbing. This is a sport which is very close to my heart, and I’ve spent the last term at university using photography as a tool to explore how we interact with the landscapes around us through rock climbing. Whether this is huge limestone cliff faces at the wildest corners of the country, or on ten-foot-high artificial walls made of plastic and wood, this fascinating sport and its cult following seems more like an art than a sport. Displayed here is a book of photographs which I have taken this term which chronicles my journey documenting climbing. I’ve also displayed my beloved Patagonia shirt, something which I have been climbing in for years and has subsequently suffered at the hands of rough granite. The chalky stains on this shirt, it’s physicality and uneven fading from constant use and my rudimentary attempts at repair, tell the story of a sport through an object.

The last project goes a little deeper into exploring the world of climbing with a short film which will be shown in the studio in 350. This film which I like to call ‘A Fly on the Wall’ is designed to be a raw documentation of the world of climbing and the uniqueness of the relationships that form here.