art projects
A Sense of Place: Reverse Rebus
A Sense of Place was a touring exhibition of libraries in the London Borough of Hounslow organised by Creative People and Places Hounslow in 2025. I worked with attendees at the Middlesex Association for the Blind's lunchclub in Hounslow to produce a couple of 'reverse rebus' artworks, based on paintings of local scenes from Hounslow's art collection.
A 'rebus' is a puzzle in which images replace words; in a reverse rebus, words replace images. In the workshops, I audio-described the two paintings we were working with (one of the Bell Pub, the other of the Strand at Chiswick with Kew Bridge in the background), and invited participants to respond to the elements in the paintings with their memories and imagination. I then reduced the paintings to outlines of pictorial elements, replacing the lost visual detail with the words of the lunchclub members. I also recorded their voices, to create a more accessible way of experiencing the output for those with visual impairment.
The resulting artworks are called nobody does not hear aeroplanes and they're all stuck together. My thanks to Creative People and Places Hounslow and Middlesex Association for the Blind for their role in making this project happen.