I am an artist, educator and academic, my practice research explores embodied approaches to learning and interpretation in the art museum. I question how a different material approach tethered to specifically tuned ‘Pedagogical Art Objects’ can engage previously unheard voices and extend the museum materialised experience. The objects I make are created to be physically encountered, acting as conduits between exhibit and audience, material provocations that push the museum visitor to find new material connection points and a space for the subjective and autobiographical. My practice focusses on approaches to art and learning and I see my teaching as an integral part of my practice, embedded into my making, collaborations, and research.
I studied BA (Hons) in Fine Art Sculpture at Brighton University, MA Fine Art Sculpture at Chelsea College of Art and have a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London. The relational encounters of my PhD research took place at Tate Modern, and at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia.
I am interested in material acts of thinking and learning and a focus on the enactment of tangible and intangible touch through the sculptural object. I explore approaches to interpretation where messy entanglements with materiality create an extension to the habitual ways of knowing or encountering art.
I have an established collaborative sculptural practice (www.sorhed.com), which includes the development of ‘Object Dialogue Boxes’ which have been commissioned by creative institutions, including York Museums Trust, Manchester Art Gallery, Turner Contemporary, Museum of London, Millennium Galleries Sheffield, Imperial War Museum, Rochester Cathedral, and the British Library.
I teach at OCA as a Fine Art Tutor but have over 20 years’ experience of teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in differing institutions as Senior Lecturer and Head of programme, most recently at Goldsmiths where I am now a PhD supervisor and run practice research methods training for PhD students. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I run projects, give papers and collaborate with other artists and researchers. Between 2023 -2025 I have been a Cambridge University Visual Culture Visiting Research Fellow making objects informed by the Fitzwilliam Collection.
