Practice Statement

>words<>sound<>in<

Dancing in silver-grey spaces between This and That, multi-modal practitioner Leona explores the hardlyheard and underseen, the conscious and not-so-conscious to create installations and events/performances centred around Language, Voice, Sound, Spatiality and Improvisation.
 
Using location recordings, site-responsiveness and improvisation, as well as text, she actively seeks to highlight physicality and context.  Cross-disciplinary collaboration is central to her practice.  Her work makes a concerted effort to reach into an audience’s imagination by promoting the art of Listening.  She believes active listening to be vital to any society and through her practice challenges the current dominant visual bias of culture by using Listening as the cue whilst acknowledging we are multi-sensory.
 
Her commitment to the inclusivity of the arts means she continually seeks to question definitions and boundaries laid down through repetition and assumption.  Leona’s work has been presented/performed in galleries, but it’s just as likely to be unexpectedly discovered responding to places and spaces not usually associated with the arts.

None of Leona’s work is created using AI.  She believes that at present this technology is legitimising theft and encouraging us to believe that creativity should be quick and easy.  Creativity in any part of life takes resilience, ingenuity, struggle and graft.  It’s human to be creative and gain pleasure and sustenance through creating.   
 
Leona's work has been financially supported by Arts Council England, Arts Council Wales and Wales Arts International, as well as a variety of individual organisations.  She was awarded Distinction in her MA Performance Writing from Dartington/Falmouth University.  In 2023 she was awarded the Grant Prize in the international Karl Sczuka Prize competition for radio art.



Selected examples of her work appear throughout this website, and audio works also can be found on Soundcloud.  It's suggested that for best effect audio works are listened to through headphones or external speakers, rather than computer speakers.