2024 - 2025

Group project culminating in an exhibition at HorseBridge Arts Centre, Whitstable June 2025 Press Release

Press release 

The Shape of memory exhibition presents the transformative journey of small fragments found at Fort Gilkicker into a contemporary light piece.

The exhibition stems from the Stories You Can Hold research project which began through repeated visits by conservation architect Deniz Beck and artist Sally Tyrie to Fort Gilkicker collecting and recording traces often lost during repair, construction and change.

Using LIDAR scans, drawings, print making, material tests and metal work, the work explores how human memory behaves: incomplete, emotional, fragmented and never an exact copy of reality. 

The final light piece developed with metalsmith Craig Palmer of SPIN360 is shaped by the geometry, materials and atmosphere of Fort Gilkicker. Scratches, stone shavings, handmade iron nails, burnt timber, green paint, brass, shadow fabric prints and digital scans all become part of the work. 

Artist Pippa Charlesworth also contributes site-responsive fabric prints developed through photography, historical research and close attention to the Fort’s ironwork shield frames, surfaces and material archive. 

The light is not merely inspired by the Fort, it carries forward a meaningful essence of an historic place 

denizbeck.com

@denizbeckpartners

Work from this project can be seen in an exhibition at Material Matters, London Design Festival Sept 15 - 17th 2026

More about Deniz Beck

photo credit Hannah Buckingham (finished box pieces)

more about the project

A project collaboration with Deniz Beck (Sustain Conservation Trust) and Pippa Charlesworth. culminating in an Exhibition titled Spatial Fragments in April 2024.

Exhib statement

Spatial Fragments is a location-specific project that seeks to record and respond to the existing architectural features, objects and artefacts linked to this historic building before redevelopment and change sweep them away forever.

Working with combinations of printmaking, drawing, sculpture, book art and installation Fine Artists Pippa Charlesworth and Sally Tyrie have been making work that reimagines and reinterprets the discoveries they have made from their repeat visits. Their journey of discovery has been supported by collaboration with Deniz Beck. The resulting exploratory work and installations seek to convey a personal interpretation of a sense of place.

An authentic, personal and beautiful reimagining that observes and celebrates their fascination with the space.

A homage and visual reminder of the beauty of imperfection and decay.

Exhibition; April 6 - 14 2024. In Boat House 5, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Link to film made by Strong Island Media

More about Sustain Conservation Trust and Pippa Charleswoth.

“People may stand and stare and imagine what lies beneath that pool of water, behind the easy lapping of the insistent waves, with their steady rhythm. Marking time and yet somehow timeless.”

Stephen Wade, “Lost to the Sea”

The work in this series has been inspired by visual and historical research into the fragile coastal margins of England’s east coast, particularly the eerie landscape of Bradwell-on-Sea and the Crouch estuary. Rather than a literal representation of landscape, this body of work explores themes of transience, absence, loss and ambiguity. Processes include Print-making, digital and analogue photography, mixed media and stitch.

Exhibit statement, Sept 2020

Collaborative residency working with Artist Helen Terry and the staff at Wicken Fen National Trust Nature Reserve 2016 - 2018. Digital Photos, drawings and installed work, responding to ideas to do with reinterpretation and a sense of place.

“Hidden celebrates some of the small and overlooked details of the Fen, and the hides in particular. Small pieces of mixed media work installed in specific hides will invite visitors to share in some of the less obvious insights that have inspired us. Glimpses through woodpecker holes. Shafts of sunlight. The textures of weathered windows. Things visitors may not usually notice. “ H. Terry, S. Tyrie, excerpt from project catalogue April 2018.

Excerpt from Exhibition statement April 2018

‘For two years, artists Helen Terry and Sally Tyrie have been visiting Wicken Fen Nature Reserve at different seasons to experience the unique landscape and environment of the Fen. This exhibition represents the culmination of this project. Each has developed a series of new work based on their observations and lines of interest resulting from their regular visits to the Fen.

While both artists work in different ways, the shared insights and experience of immersing themselves in the environment and the 'spirit of place' have had a significant influence on their resulting work.