Alison works as a sculptor as well as a painter and printmaker. The materials she uses for her sculptures all come from the earth; iron, clay, glass, wood, oxides, minerals. Intense heat is used in creating much of her sculpture, the materials are traumatised through fire and transform themselves; exploding, fusing together, pushing apart. The results are always unexpected and the process within the kiln or the foundry creates the final piece of work.

After working in a refugee camp Alison wanted to portray an image of asylum seekers disappearing into freezing fog, going back to their tent in the scrubland, after receiving some food. The only way Alison could think to express this image was through painting. So painting started! That image is still to be done, but there have been a lot of paintings in the past few years and Alison currently works more with paint than in three dimensions; but both are needed and it all depends on what Alison wants to portray and therefore what materials and processes are needed to be used.

Alison’s work reflects on the injustices and traumas endured by humanity; referring to cross-cutting themes: devastation of community lives and peoples joys, abandoned and disrupted societies and dreams. The millions of horrendous journeys having to be travelled for safety and a hoped for future. The attempted destruction of accumulated cultural and historical memories. Alison’s work despairs of the ongoing horror of conflict and war and the seeming inability of humans to learn from previous experience. Why do we put our resources and skills into developing smarter weapons to kill and maim and which cause untold ecological destruction ; rather than building a sustainable future for the world ? The enormous contribution the military machine and war has on the destruction of our ecological fragility is not taken into account when trying to address the climate emergercy. It is difficult to articluate the links, horrors, bewilderment of conflicts, and Alison tries to do this through her work.

Alison is a Member of Royal Society of Sculptors (MBSS), 56 Group Wales, and a member of Sculpture Network. Alison was selected to exhibit at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Alison studied art and ceramics at Loughborough College of Art and Design and Wolverhampton Polytechnic from 1971 – 1975. She got a scholarship to study tapestry weaving in Poland during 1975 – 1976. For the next 15 years she explored weaving and fibre constructions and then paper pulp sculptures. She returned to clay and earth based materials in 1990’s and uses fire as a key part of her process; with kiln and foundry as basic tools. Paint is now added to the mix. It is not possible to make a living out of political art. So Alison worked internationally with many different organisations, governments and NGO’s