PARENTPHERNALIA (2025/2026)

Photographs (2025)
This is a kaleidoscope image of the plastic paraphernalia that comes with having kids. The house has been swamped over the years with plastic. But these things - Play-Doh pots and lids, Calpol syringes and Kinder Eggs felt like the EXTRA bits of plastic that come with kid toys/kid stuff. Yet they are kind of toys themselves. We’ve stacked the pots, made burgers with the lids, put different stuff in the eggs and squirted water in the bath with the syringes. They’re not single use items but short-term use items and they BUILD UP VERY QUICKLY. They felt too sturdy a type of plastic to throw into home recycling so I collected them and then repurposed them into this.

Workshop (27th September 2026)

As part of North Shields’ Cultural Quarter’s Open Quay event, I ran a drop-in workshop where I invited kids + grown ups to play and create with these items. With donations from other mum’s, they had a large number of items to create patterns and games with. I was blown away with the level of creativity employed. With foam boards covered in double-sided sticky tape attached to the wall, they were able to generate a wide range of images, patterns and games. The space was calm and the open-ended nature of the activity meant participants played for longer periods. There was collaboration between families but also between grown ups and their young people. From babies to near-teenagers, the workshop was both inspiring and enjoyable.