I am an interdisciplinary artist and educator working with photography, painting and sculpture to explore the entanglements of memory, heritage and history.
In an effort to better understand my cultural heritage, my recent research has investigated the materiality of memory with my family's archive of both still and moving images. Increasingly, I have become interested in the capacity of photography and film to examine familial and postcolonial narratives, as well as its function as an aide memoire.
In 2021 I published ‘The Dutchman liked flowers’, a photo-essay that examined my father’s postcolonial upbringing as a Dutch Indonesian alongside his ailing memory. This engagement with photography and film continues to develop as I experiment with analogue and alternative processes.
Before turning to my heritage as a source of inspiration, my practice was predominantly focused on ecology and the materiality of objects. Between 2017 and ‘19, as an MA student, I began skip-diving for materials, which eventually became the subject of my work, as well as its medium. Drawing on Object-Oriented Ontology, which presupposes an ontological equality or “flatness” of things, my thesis exhibition, An Ecology of Objects, sought to include inorganic objects in a broader definition of ecology.
I continued to develop this work between 2022 and ‘23 during my PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate of Education) as educational research with students. Doing so allowed me to develop these ideas artistically within the academic framework of education. I was keen to stimulate discussion with students about ecology and how they interpreted themselves within their surroundings.
Throughout my practice is an engagement with mark-making and gesture, which has been central since my undergraduate degree.
2023 - present
Creative Workspace Member at Together Culture, Cambridge
2020 - 21
Studio artist at St. Barnabas Press, Cambridge
EDUCATION
2023, PGCE, Art & Design, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.
2019, Master of Arts, Fine Art: Distinction, The Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University.
2015, Bachelor of Arts, Fine Art and English Literature: First Class Honours, Aberystwyth University.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2019
CAST: MA Degree Show, The Cambridge School of Art: 5th September to 13th.
Motion Sickness and Friends, Motion Sickness Project Space, Cambridge: 22nd August to September 17th.
Shifted, The Cambridge School of Art: 4th July to 19th.
Sustainability Art Prize, The Cambridge School of Art: April 4th to 29th.
2018
INCITE, Zion Baptist Church, Cambridge: 11th December to 15th.
Interim, The Cambridge School of Art: 5th July to 20th.
The Third Hand (as William Williams), The Cambridge School of Art: 4th May to 11th.
2016
The Masters: Etching, The Bankside Gallery, London: 10th November to 20th.
The BIG Exhibition, Aberystwyth University School of Art: 10th October to 18th November. The exhibition later transferred to the Thoreau Art Gallery in Franklin Pierce University, New Hampshire, from 1st March to 28th, 2017.
2015
Undergraduate Degree Show, Aberystwyth University School of Art: May.
PUBLICATIONS
2021, ‘The Dutchman liked flowers’ in Epoch no. 3: Roots. Edinburgh: Epoch Press
2020, Baker, S., Boyer, J., Jeeves, N. and Kobin, T., 2020 Ways of Thinking. Cambridge: Ruskin Arts Publications.
AWARDS
2018, Silver Bursary, awarded by The Cambridge School of Art.
2018, Acquisition of work by South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK).
RESIDENCIES
2023, Caravanserai, Cambridge Artworks, Cambridge.
2014, Joya: arte + ecología, Los Gázquez, Andalucía.
TEACHING
2023 - present
Art & Photography Teacher at St. Andrew’s College Cambridge.
2021 - 22
Art & Design Tutor at Cambridge Seminars College.
3D Design Teacher (Summer School) at the Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts.
2019 - 20
Studio Supervisor, The Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
2023 - present
Member of the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD)