Exhibitions and displays
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Arctic Expressions
2025: Kirkleatham Museum
2027: Hull Maritime Museum; Lincoln Museum; The McManus Dundee's Art Gallery and Museum
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This exhibition explores Indigenous artistry from the Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska, reflecting the beauty and challenges of living in a changing environment, as well as the Arctic's vibrancy and spiritual significance.
The works on display demonstrate how resilient Arctic communities live with and adapt to socio-political and environmental change, and how artistic expression is embedded in daily life.
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Featuring historic and contemporary works from the British Museum collection shown side by side, including lithographs, soapstone, textiles, bone and antler works, and a new artwork by Alaska Native artist Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich (pictured) titled Shedding Natchiayaaq from Kigiktaq, which represents a seal's transformation from infancy to youth.
Arctic Indigenous Peoples' material culture is rooted in daily practices and storytelling traditions, often spiritually and figuratively intertwined with the animals and plants that inhabit the region. ​Highlighting the interconnection of tradition, innovation and resilience, the exhibition illustrates how life in the Arctic is steeped in artistic endeavours and cultural expressions.
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Supported by the Dorset Foundation in memory of Harry M Weinrebe.​​
Native North American footwear
2024 - ongoing, permanent display. North America Gallery,
The British Museum
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The display comprises 32 pairs of footwear (men, women's and children's) from 20 different Indigenous Nations across North America, created from 33 materials. The oldest pair dates to c.1710, while the most recent were created in 2009.
The display speaks to themes of geographic dispersal, including traditional homelands, forced removals, migration, and the contemporary diaspora. It also addresses the environment in terms of materials and seasonality; and social and cultural life in relation to the makers and knowledge systems associated with footwear production, gender, age, activities, links to the past; spirituality; and economics, trade, and external influences.
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The circular design of the display is significant, relating to varying meanings of circles for Native North American communities, such as cyclical worldviews, continuation and survival, and the interconnection of the past and present.
The footwear is arranged in geographic order, mirroring the layout of the gallery, allowing visitors to see variations in materials and styles across North America. However, positioning the inner circle of footwear anti-clockwise disrupts ideas of static and fixed communities.
The placement of each pair has been carefully considered to reflect particular narratives within the display and are grounded in contemporary community work, historic photographs and archival sources. Children's footwear is positioned at the four corners of the case to symbolise cultural continuity, generational agency and futurity. The interpretation centres technologies of making and materiality, and personal and object stories.
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Footwear examples:
- Arctic region kamiks and mukluks and snow shoes
- Stunning horse-hair embroidered moccasins from Hudson Bay area
- Teri Greeves beaded stilettos Deer Woman as Lady Luck
- Examples of moccasins made for tourist consumption
- Moccasins from the Carlisle Indian Residential School
- Moccasins from the artist Benjamin West's collection
- Commissioned powwow ceremonial regalia moccasins
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2022: The Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
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This display focused on orchids native to Colombia and was based on my research as part of the Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia Project (UPFC) project team.
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The exhibition brought together botanical specimens, scientific line drawings, watercolours and other illustrations, and archival documents, complemented by interpretation statements based on interviews I conducted with Kew scientists.
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The exhibition also included two digital elements: access to the UPFC database, which I populated with Colombian and Venezuelan botanical illustrations (I digitised these as part of my role), and second, a Google Earth simulation I created to meticulously follow the route of botanical 'Orchid hunter' Albert Millican in Colombia between 1887 and 1891. At key points along this route, the simulation presented extracts from Millican's journal alongside related line drawings, illustrations and watercolours of orchids from Kew's collection.
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A key curatorial decision was to highlight botanical works on paper to illuminate the often-hidden contributions of women to plant science, art, ethnobotany and plant collecting trends from the 1800s.
The exhibition also emphasised evolving relationships between botanic gardens, conservation, archival collections and communities of origin, showing the value of botanical archives and how historic material can be reinterpreted and connected with contemporary plant science and cultural practices.​​​​​​​​​​
Following the Orchid: Art, Science and Archives from Colombia
