Set in rural Norfolk, Top Shed is, quite literally, a shed, set in the garden of artists Imi & Sue Maufe. Top Shed is next to a nature reserve, a disused quarry where stone was removed for road-building during the surge in motoring of the 1930’s and is a series of former gravel pits filled with water. Birds such as Shovelers, Gadwells, Mallards and Canadian Geese now inhabit these waters and islands. The nature reserve is managed by Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

Artists are invited to stay in the shed for short, residency-periods of two weeks. However, due to Covid, my two-week residency ended up lasting four months – a unique and strange time of an unsettled world in crisis. It was an ideal opportunity to take deep breaths, put my head down, explore nature and push my artistic boundaries.

I learnt to edit sound and video in the glorious confines of my shed, and produced a series of drawings that were created and immediately destroyed, leaving only photographic documentation of their existence. Top Shed allowed me the opportunity to create a body of work, ‘Her Outline Kept Slipping’, that reflected the anxieties and the transitory nature of life during a pandemic.