About Naomi
My work looks at human interaction with the environment, especially issues around journey, elements, water and memory. My practice is multimedia and multidisciplinary, using drawing, paint, photography, sculpture, installation, walking, performance and sound to investigate the world.
2023 – present
Artist in residence with Convex Seascape Survey and Blue Marine Foundation documenting processes of scientific research with sketches and paintings. Using sea sediment collected during the scientific research, creating paint, and illustrating some of the many marine invertebrates involved in bioturbation – how benthic organisms cycle nutrients and drive carbon sequestration in the ocean. Through creating hand-made, tangible work with sustainable materials, this project will help us learn about protecting the ocean and benthic environments to achieve long-lasting societal and behavioural changes, and impact positively on carbon sequestration and climate change.
2024
‘SeaBed’ – lead artist commissioned by Exeter City Council, funded by Arts Council England. SeaBed is a bedspread about the bed of the sea. It is a collaboration between scientists, refugees and artists and was made in Exeter entirely from salvaged and donated fabric. By hand forming the benthic ecosystem in sections, a human community recreates an underwater community, and we can learn more about ‘the world in our hands’. Sustainable methods and materials not only minimise the carbon footprint of the artwork, but demonstrate the possibilities we have of making active choices in our lives to protect and conserve the ocean.
2024
Artist in residence with ‘What is cultured meat?’ – a public engagement project in Barnstaple, asking for and documenting public knowledge and feelings around lab-grown meat and its potential ramifications on animal welfare and the environment. Working with researchers from the University of Birmingham, University College London, the University of Cambridge and the University of Basel, I created mobile art for street engagement and ran a series of art workshops.
2023
La Mer – a series of paintings about the intertidal zone – the shifting world between the dry and the submerged land. The colours may seem to offer easy connections with summer, but also reference earth minerals brought to the surface and carved out by human hand and forces of nature: coal, rust, copper, gold. The tides can be positive, bringing new life, or destructive, eroding millennia from cliff faces in a matter of minutes. The paintings obliquely reference loss and mourning: the relentless push and pull of the tides means that this space is fugitive: whenever you try to grasp a moment it vanishes; washed away like a memory, always beyond reach.
2022
Drawing Water (marks of hope and survival) – exploration of embodied practice with mark-making and bodies of water.
Commissioned exhibition St Nicholas Priory, Exeter, ‘Reading Water’, with community workshops
2021
Trade/Exchange commission with University of Exeter, Devon and Exeter Institution, Exeter City Council, Exeter Culture – site specific installation in an empty retail outlet. ‘Shell’ was created using chalk made from dissolved seashells and seawater. It is a testament to nature, to science and scientists (especially forgotten ones), to the slow accretion of knowledge that has built our understanding of the world, and to the fragility of life and our ecosystem, which we need to nurture and care for.
Commissioned exhibition St Nicholas Priory, Exeter, ‘Reading Water’
2020
UNESCO Exeter City of Literature commission ‘Reading Water’ – a walking art/ artist book about the River Exe and literature. A book of cyanotype prints of water, fragments of poems and objects that I found while walking, some natural, some manufactured. Some of the poems I read are about wildlife in rivers; some are about rivers far away and remind me how we are connected to other places and times by water. As the river water is part of a great cycle of nature, the book has been made using re-purposed paper (lining paper, wrapping paper, paper salvaged from an office fire), home-made glue (wheat flour, water), home-made oak gall ink (including oak galls, rust, wine found in an Exe Valley nature reserve, wine vinegar and river water), ascorbic acid (lemon juice), mud from the Exe, natural chalk and cyanotype using river water.
The Box, Plymouth ‘State of Emergency’ Contemporary Art Micro commission
2019
Hothouse/Coolhouse ‘Tasting the Change’ residency with CCANW, Science Walden (Korea), and artdotearth. Collaboration with Dr Nichola Harmer, University of Plymouth, our project ‘Dreaming of islands’ drew on artistic and scientific research on the world’s oceans, islands and marine life, to explore how historical and contemporary cultural depictions of environmental change in these settings may help us respond to current environmental crises.
University of Plymouth Sustainable Earth Institute Creative Associate Grant ‘The art of politics: representing sustainability challenges in the UK’s overseas territories’ with Dr Nichola Harmer, University of Plymouth. The work looks at the complex, intangible and ambiguous relationship between UK decision-makers and the overseas territories on sustainability issues including tackling habitat loss, invasive species, over-fishing and climate change, which threaten these fragile and unique environments. The paintings have been made on eco-friendly, hand-made cotton rag paper. The paint is lime juice and hand-made, genuine indigo watercolour, diluted with seawater. The sustainability and fragility of the materials also speaks of the fragility of the environment and the level of responsibility that is required to protect and enhance the biodiversity and environments in the overseas territories. This collaboration also led to a poster and a published co-authored paper.
Artist in residence with ExeterMarine, University of Exeter and Galapagos Conservation Trust in the Galapagos Archipelago; looking at ocean plastic pollution (with Dr Ceri Lewis, Dr Adam Porter, and Dr Jen Jones). I have helped with ocean and beach surveying of macro- and micro-plastics and worked with community groups of children and adults, residents and tourists in the islands, looking at raising awareness of pollution and wildlife and ways of changing the way we live and use resources.
2018
‘Plymouth Futures’ as part of Plymouth Art Weekender and The Atlantic Project; imagined how our changing climate might affect ocean levels around the city and the local coastline. 101 re-touched tourist postcards of Plymouth, or ‘Futurecards’, were distributed in public places around Plymouth as part of The Atlantic Project and Plymouth Art Weekender for the public to find and keep. On each was a link to information about climate change.
2017-18
Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence: ‘ice report‘ with the University of Sheffield Department of Geography, University of Norway in Svalbard, researching the cryosphere with Professor Andy Hodson. ‘ice report‘ looks at the multiple layers of history, commerce, art and science in our understanding of the earth and our place in it. This was exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society in London.
2017
‘Swift’, Princesshay Exeter 10th Anniversary Sculpture, with The Crown Estate. Two million people saw the outdoor, aerial installation. Made of hundreds of salvaged plastic milk bottles from the cafes of central Exeter and copper wire from various sources, the sculpture of hand-cut plastic swifts highlighted issues of migration, pollution, conservation and resources.
A-n The Artist Information Company Travel Bursary
Expedition artist, Tasmania with Professor Jenny Pickerill, University of Sheffield.
‘Makers of the Multiverse’ Spacex Gallery/Juneau Projects/Preston Street Union (PSU)
‘Random Art Machine’ with PSU
‘Five Bridges and a Waffle’ walk with interventions in time and space, with PSU
2016
Preston Street Union (PSU), collaborative project, Spacex Gallery with Trevor Pitt, Cathy Wade, Emily Warner, Juneau Projects, and Clare Thornton
VASW mentoring award with Preston Street Union (PSU)
‘Bookmarks’ with PSU and Libraries Unlimited
2015
Arctic Expedition artist on s/v Ezra to East Greenland in the High Arctic (UK to Greenland via Faroes and Iceland)
‘Drawing breath’, improvisational multi-media performance with Al Swainger, musician
Arts Council England Grant funding for R&D of One Small Peace – large-scale public-participation project for Exeter, with Exeter Cathedral
2014
‘The Driftwood Cross’ permanent collection of Exeter Cathedral
2013
‘All About Migration’, in collaboration with Professor Stuart Bearhop, University of Exeter.
Exeter City Council Lead artist on design of street furniture. Commissioned by Exeter City Council
‘Copper Copse’ site specific sculpture for Yarner Wood, Dartmoor with Natural England
2012
‘Art of Australia’, with Professor Jenny Pickerill, University of Sheffield and Professor Sam Smiles, University of Exeter
2010
Expedition artist on expedition to the Kimberley, remote NW Australia, with Professor Jenny Pickerill
2009
Artist in residence – Parks Canada and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery – Terra Nova National Park, Newfoundland, Canada, including shadowing and working with Park Rangers and scientists
Public Speaking and Media
2024
Leading Director Q&A at screening of film about artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Workshop leader on ‘Science Communication in a Changing World’ at University of Exeter
2021
Trade/Exchange International Women’s Day Webinar with University of Exeter, DEI, Exeter Culture
‘Occupy the Airwaves’ International Women’s Day with Tidelines, DreadnoughtSW radio show
2019
British Science Week, ‘Art meets science: journeys to the ends of the earth’ with Dr Anne Le Brocq, Senior lecturer in glaciology, University of Exeter
‘Evolving the Forest’ symposium, Dartington: performative talk
RGS-IBG ‘Explore Southwest’ Communicating your Research panellist
2018
Royal Geographical Society London, ‘Ice Alive’
‘Frozen Pint of Science’, Sheffield
‘Explore’ RGS-IBG, London – Communicating your research panellist
BBC Paul Hudson Weather Show
2017
Films and interviews for ‘Swift’ including BBC and ITV
2016
Exeter Phoenix/Exeter School of Art Artists’ Talks
Publications and Awards
2023
Shortlisted for University of Exeter Knowledge Exchange awards with The Convex Seascape Survey
2023
Co-author: ‘Burrowing into Benthic invertebrates and their role in long-term sequestration of blue carbon on the muddy seafloor’ – Adam Porter, Mara Fischer, Tara Williams, Cassia Wilson, Carter Melnick, Naomi Hart, Jasmine Godbold, Ceri Lewis, Martin Solan
2022
Co-author: ‘UK state identity-making and British overseas territories’ environments in times of ecological crisis and geopolitical change‘ – Nichola Harmer, Ian Bailey and Naomi Hart, Small States & Territories, Vol. 5, No. 1, May 2022
2020
‘Evolving the Forest’, published by art.earth, in collaboration with Timber Strategies, CCANW, Science Walden, Korea.
‘Culture, Community and Climate: conversations and emergent praxis’, published by art.earth
2019
RGS-IBG Annual Conference Poster ‘The art of politics: representing sustainability challenges in the UK’s overseas territories’, with Dr Nichola Harmer
2016
‘POST SOUP’ with PSU, Topos, limited edition artist book
2015
‘A Passion for Glass’ – The Dan Klein and Alan J. Poole private collection of modern glass, Edited by Rose Watban, published by National Museums, Scotland.
National Museum of Scotland permanent collection – ‘Memory of D’, sandcast glass bowl, Dan Klein and Alan J Poole collection
Education
1998 – 2002
BA Art and Design – 1st class Honours, University of Sunderland, UK
1990 – 1994
BA Modern Languages – 2:1 Honours (French and German), University of Durham, UK