Weird and Wonderful Whitstable (2021)
Having grown up on Australian beaches the English seaside came as a shock. The experience of going to the seaside in England is an inverted version of what I have always known. The temperature, the texture, even the water is different.
Yet it has undeniable charm.
I respect the bathers striding towards the freezing water in their beanies. I adore the colourful wooden beach huts, which remind me of storybook dwellings. I am curious about local legends, such as the Whitstable based ‘Crabzilla’, that lend a fabulously weird vibe to these quirky seaside towns. And I feel the depth and pathos of wars past, looking out across the Channel border.
The works in this series explore aspects of seaside culture in England that I find weird and wonderful. The primary subject is Whitstable, a seaside town near our family home, alongside other towns and beaches we have visited on the Kentish coast.
