“Places, Spaces, Traces reflects on my Romani heritage. I am interested in the commonalities we have as people, the need for a place of our own, family and food. With migration, changes in our working lives and increasing opportunities to travel our certainty about who we are and where we fit in is unsure.

Whilst living in a small house on the outskirts of Maidstone for much of my adult life I may, by any description, be perceived as a ‘settled’ member of my local community however my art practice and lifestyle choice contradicts this. I travel internationality in pursuit of my work and readily continue drawing, stitching and producing pieces on the move as I work and engage with others. I see what I do as being of the world and not as separate from it. Everything is collated and collected on my journey. My thinking and approaches to my work is constantly in motion and being challenged by the exchange with other people and places.

It is the transient nature of my work and process, a compulsion to engage with the things experienced as part of the overlooked details of daily life that are of interest. Yet, at the same time the stories I find about people and place, regardless of social, cultural and economic backgrounds inform who I am and my particular take on the world.

This work formed part of the exhibition Gypsy Maker4 hosted by the Romani Cultural and Arts Company.

The connection we have to landscape and place is at the heart of my work and the question What would you value enough to bring with you if forced to leave your home, and what you would miss if you had to leave it behind? In recent times, these simple words have equal resonance as we find our lives restricted of movement due to the pandemic and or personal circumstances when we find it less easy to meet with friends or family to share a cuppa, eat a meal or pass the time.

This new work has led to an invitation for me to create an installation for exhibition at the beautiful Sint-Anna-ten-Drieën church in Antwerp in 2022 through the organisation vzw ANNA3. I have also been invited install a selection of the pieces in the amazing creative space of a converted lightvessel LV21, in Gravesend in the UK as well as at R Space in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.

All of my work uses reclaimed materials, cloth and paper and much of the media I use such as paint or dye is retrieved and salvaged from bins etc wherever I can find it. We have become careless in our care of this shared world.

The exhibition will include an installation piece called the The Shipping Forecast created out of printed and painted cloth, paper and lace (including many pieces sent to me from all over the World) and accompanying Empty Vessels using paper and cloth left over from larger works. The pieces contain words stitched as I travelled, relating to the themes of migration and movement of people triggered by a ‘sound bites’ from the BBC news overheard in 2018 reporting that '17,700 people have drowned in the water around Europe since 2014'. The shipping comes over the radio, with its rhythms a mantra of words to keep those at sea safe in the night. Reassuring during the times I struggle to sleep and a reminder of 'home'.

The ideas are forming as I work. I make it a rule that all stitching is whilst I am away on the move. On trains, planes and buses I stitch into fragments of cloth. I have freedom of movement because of my passport (for now) but many do not.”

Above text taken from Embroidering the Everyday 2021 Batsford Publications by kind permission of Cas Holmes