Standford
About
A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
On paper
In sound
@hortus_silvam
My art practice is motivated by the intensity of life; noticing the minutiae, tracing encounters with nature, informed by the sights, sounds and smells of the real, the imagined and the remembered, coalescing with the passing of time.
I use moving image and sound, to work alone performing unannounced and unrehearsed, capturing fleeting moments, within the parameters of a loosely defined framework which embraces the aleatory; extending ideas into the imaginary.
My work records and documents a subjective, observational, poetic narrative, diverse in form and content, both reflective and responsive, allowing the humour and absurd to interact with the melancholy and disquiet of my findings; to shimmer briefly in your imagination.
Inner Landscapes and Absence Presence are overarching themes within which I explore the inter-relational, loss, grief and the necessary occult that lurks within us…a journey into the darker recesses of the mind.
Since moving to rural Suffolk, I have been confronted by my own assumptions and expectations with regard to the concept of ‘rural’. A Rural Idyll and In the Forest Garden are two entwined bodies of work which continue to grow; a self entangled with its local environment. The aim is unashamedly to raise public awareness in ways that are poetic, playful and imaginative but profoundly serious, by giving form to our rapidly diminishing habitats for flora and fauna to survive. I witness here the demands of extraction and extinction, associated with perpetual growth and expansion, with a bewildering disbelief at the damage we wreak on our natural world.
Sound is essential to my practice as a visual artist where I explore the sounds of space and place, with and without my presence, in extended, long durational listening opportunities. The act of listening and the act of recording for me initiate ideas or become woven into more intuitive compositions incorporating voice, instrument and collaboration.
My interests lie in listening to our sound environment as a whole; the audible and inaudible. My father was a composer, my mother a gifted musican and piano teacher and I played musical instruments when I was young. Now, my attention is drawn to listening closely to my environment, the human and non-human, and the objects of our daily lives, particularly revealed through the use of small, sensitive microphones.
I continue to upload sounds of place to the online radio aporee sound maps project concerned with the creation and exploration of public space. These are field recordings where I confront and highlight a politics of noise pollution in our environment; sounds that are inescapable.
2025 Dialogues, DIVFUSE Film Archive No.1 with a theme on domesticity
Collections
2025 Sound and Moving Image Collection, British Library Sound Archive
Sound
2024 Ephemeral Things Digital Album, Bandcamp
2024 Pond Flora & Fauna broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM
2023 Drawing Digital Album, Bandcamp
2023 Hiding selected for Murmuration#3 - Species, Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 The Caged and the Free Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 Dialogue with my Father III: Now He is Gone Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 Apple Orchard; In the Forest Garden broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM
2022 /prə(ʊ)ˈkrastɪneɪt/ Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 (in)visible Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 Chain-Link broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM, Field Recording
2022 Domestic Boiler broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM, Field Recording
Group Shows
1994 Two Nudes; Two Nudes, super-8mm film/Beta-cam double life-size video projection, Ruskin School, Oxford University
1994 Notation Drawings, collage, photomontange on paper, Warsaw, Poland
1994 Nude Against the Light, performance, Reichstag, Berlin
1994 Intangible Distance; Nude Combing Her Hair, performance, Long Room, New College, Oxford
1993 Exhibition of Drawing and Painting, Group Show, work on paper, University College, Oxford
1993 Disembodied; Nude at the Window, performance, Group Show, Bermondsey, London
Residencies
2022 Murmuration#3 - Species, Scotland
2007 What will you be when you grow up? Community mural mosaic, London
2005 Video Portraits Year 7-8 students, digital video with sound 5’, London
1998 Transience; Nude in an Interior objects, performance, 16mm film with sound, London
Curator
2006 The Rhythm of Life exhibition Croydon Clocktower
Education
2016 Forest Garden Design, Martin Crawford Agroforestry Research Trust, Devon
2000 PGDip Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector 16+
1998 MA Enterprise and Management of the Creative Arts, London College of Communication, London
1997 PGDip Law, BBP Law School, London
1994 BA Fine Art (Ist Class Hons), Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, Oxford
1990 Fine Art Foundation Course, West Yorkshire
Research
2024 Soil Chromatography, Hannah Fletcher, Land Art
2022 Phytography, Karel Doing
2011- Woodcarving, Robin Wood, Edale
2010 Willow Weaving, Mary Butcher, V&A London
2009 Bookbinding, Camberwell College of the Arts
Literary Executor
2014- Literary Executor managing the estate of my father the composer Patric Standford