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I draw from fairy tales, comics, great masters of religious painting and quantum physics, telling made up stories about things that are both seen, and unseen. Seeing most things as magical including science, while at the same time thinking that everything is science. I am interested in fairytales and their ability to make digestible awkward truths which otherwise we would turn our back on. I have had poetry, short stories and animation, broadcast on television, published in Culture Matters and the International Times. Live storytelling is my current art and activism, and most of my pictorial work comes from the worlds contained within these stories.


Using an improvisational approach which reflects a similar process found in my stop-frame animated films and stories; collages build into the discovery of narratives. Animated figures whose scale is governed by a secret law, are confronted by the absurd nature of what is around them.

My visual art was selected twice for The New Contemporaries exhibition, in which I was also a prize winner; exhibited, amongst others, at Wellcome Collection, and District of Columbia Arts Center USA, in 'The New Future' with two other artists focusing on issues of science and space. Currently showing in turing exhibition Dear Christine which opened at Vane Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK, and is currently at the Elysium Gallery in Swansea, Wales. Also showing in Wales Contemporary Exhibition 2019, opening at Mall Galleries 5-10th November 2019.

My avant-garde animated films have been screened internationally and on UK television; winning the Grand Prize at Zagreb International Festival of Animated Film, The Time Out Film Award, and Best Debute Film at the British Film Awards, noted by mythographer Marina Warner, they are a part of the BFI Collection.

'Animation, like a mural or piece of street art was something which could bypass the elitism of a mainstream gallery and yet still provide challenging messages outside the mainstream. When my first animated films were shown on television I was thrilled, it felt like the last frontier; we didn't have the internet in those days.

I believe that the spirit of playfulness is the most important element in any artwork, when we are playful our egos, and maybe even space-time gets out of the way.

The animated films created via stop frame animation, are made large scale or so small that they require a magnifier to animate. They are inhabited by protagonists constantly on the verge of a self-revelation, whose revelations are provided by the fragile materials from which they are made. These protagonists, coming from nothing and being insubstantial, create a sense of suspense, the only way for them to keep going is to welcome the changing spectres into which they travel and to embrace them as a part of a new self.

JoWonder
Painting:-

In 2007, I embarked on the '6 Days Goodbye Poems Of Ophelia' project. The project is a living painting in bacteria, a re-telling of the story of Ophelia's death depicted in John Everett Millais' oil painting; seeing her death as a form of beautiful transformation a return to the land. The work uses the movement of live bacteria for animation and was created in a sterile laboratory,(commissioned by The Wellcome Trust, science by Dr Simon Park), the poetic soundtracks to the animations are created by the public and some international poetry soundscapes are currently still in process.

Installation:-

Flatlanders (2007), an animated video installation premiered in Guildford Cathedral alongside a debate which included, herself and physicists Dr Brian Cox and Dr Jim al Khalili, 'Is Science The New Religion?' The work referenced the ancient Greek character of Themis, in connection with the launch of the epic experiment at CERN, incorporating sound taken from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.(thanks to Milton Mermikides for sounds).

Performance:-

Jowonder And The Psychic Tea Leaves, is an audience interactive performance in the manner of a mock Victorian Séance; using humour as a central device, incorporating improvisation. A chosen member of the audience drinks a cup of tea -and the process unravels. Some venues have been: St John on Bethnal Green, Cabaret Futura, Courtyard Theatre and End Of The Pier Show, live music chronologically thanks to: Billy Smith, Jowe Head, Ansuman Biswas and Andrew Hedges.


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