The simplicity and speed of this project was very much in contrast with a role I had at this time, working as Lead Artist for Gateshead Council. It was an interesting situation but I was invariably involved in planning procedures which, for me, were somewhat protracted and ‘drawn out’. By comparison Research Room felt like a holiday!

The project was fast and collaborative. It involved the contribution of 50+ people (mainly architects and artists). I particularly enjoyed the fact that I was able to abandon artistic control and then recover it.

The basic idea was to bring people to the Waygood building in Newcastle, hand them a digital camera and ask them to take between one and three photos of anything that appealed to them for any reason. A comment was then extracted from our recorded conversations and attached to their image. It resulted in a collection of 77 digital images & phrases and these were exhibited as part of Research Room at the Waygood Gallery.