In early 2024, I took part in the Porthleven Residency in Cornwall - a collaborative programme between Bath School of Art and Falmouth University that brought together a group of artists and students for a week of immersive making and observation. My time there culminated in a hand-bound artist book titled Things That Scare Me But I Do Them Anyway, composed of photographs and stream-of-consciousness writing collected throughout the residency.
The residency offered me space to reconnect with the sea, a place I’ve always felt drawn to. The unfamiliarity of this new coastline - defined by its rugged cliffs and ever-changing tides - provoked a deeper connection with the environment. The work became about building daily rituals and observing slow environmental rhythms: watching the way waves reconfigured the same stretch of shoreline through erosion and deposition, how light shifted on the surface of water, how the sound of the harbour rumble grounded each day.
A site-specific project made up of photographs and words collected during a residency in Porthleven
Things That Scare Me, But I Do Them Anyway
As I navigated this new landscape, I resisted the urge to gather physical materials. Instead, I gathered words, sensations, and visual fragments - choosing not to take from the land but to respond to it. I questioned my role in the ecosystem and the ethics of collecting. Why do I seek natural beauty and ignore the human traces - plastics, waste - scattered across the same ground? The decision to collect through memory and writing marked a shift in my practice: towards non-extractive ways of working and towards a more reciprocal relationship with place.
My time in Porthleven gave me permission to write instinctively and unedited, letting the rhythm of the sea inform a new way of thinking through language. The result is a tender and personal document of a place and moment in time. Things That Scare Me But I Do Them Anyway is a meditation on vulnerability, belonging, and environmental responsibility - a record of how place can hold, challenge, and shape us.
