Marie-Louise Plum // b.1981
Artist Statement: Interdisciplinary artist, writer, fieldwalker, and mudlark, exploring the past to make sense of the present, envisioning versions of our communal human future.
Through my artistic practice, I tell stories with a focus on identity, history, and heritage, employing traditional and contemporary disciplines, including painting, printmaking, poetry, prose, and audiovisual works.
Blurring boundaries between past and present, often incorporating site-specific found items, ephemeral and digital record, and field recordings, I create provocative works exploring what it is to be human, searching for identity and sense of place and belonging. My work straddles the realms of psychogeography and people-led history and archaeology, opening portals to parallel worlds past.
I invite audiences to engage with both the familiar and unknown, a space between reality and dreams, where a foreboding sense of déjà vu and the uncanny are ever present. I am particularly interested in subconscious narratives, asking my audience to keenly consider context, asking “what is the conversation behind the conversation?”
Selected Exhibitions and Performances
2026 // ‘Conrad’s Eye’ - Canons House and Grounds, Mitcham, London
The eye of Joseph Conrad, oil painting in River Thames found oyster shell, exploring links between Lowestoft, London and bodies of water as a conduit for communication.
2025 // ‘Mother and Mary Sutton’- Bell Gallery, Black Shuck Festival, Suffolk
Oil painting on linen, portrait of accused and executed witches, Mother and Mary Sutton, the first to be tried by water in England. In addition to this painting, I have created a collection of imagined painted portraits, and an audiovisual body of work, exploring ‘witches’ and heretics in England.
2023 // ‘Storywalk’ – National Maritime Museum & Queen’s House, London
Storytelling performance-walk and printed interactive ‘artmap’ exploring the value of museum collections vis people-found objects, including those relating to colonialism.
2020 // ‘Portal’ - #VirtualVisions at Blakefest, Felpham
Oil painting exploring the subconscious mind, and the work of William Blake.
2017 & 2014 // Suburban English Magick, CCCA, Coventry/Fox Court, London
Durational live painting, poetry and audio installation exploring semi-rural landscapes, human populations, existence, habit, and ritual.
2010 – 2020 Exhibitions and Performances
Foragers of the Foreshore - OXO Barge House, London, UK // Moore Plum - Stash Gallery London, UK // Imitation Solero - The Soup Kitchen Manchester, UK // Silver Linings - The Koppel Project, London, UK // Roving Diagnostic Unit - Wellcome Collection, Shuffle Festival, William Morris Gallery, London, UK // One Bare Foot Square - Van Den Geest Hermitage Museum Amsterdam, NL // What Goes On In the Mind - Town Hall Gallery & Museum Oxford, UK // The Mind Machine - Menier Gallery London, London, UK // Running With Wolves, Fringe Festival, Stockholm, SW // Once Upon Again - Milkwood Gallery Cardiff, UK // New Folk Visionaries - Winns Gallery, London, UK // Mask! – Forest Fringe, Edinburgh, UK // H A P P Y L A N D, Jacksons Lane Theatre, London, UK // Space Made Live - The ArtHouse Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
As an Arts Producer and Curator
2021 – 2026
Hands on History
For the past five years I have produced and curated boundary-pushing interactive arts and heritage events – such as storytelling walks, and panel discussions on migration and the transience of riverside populations – as part of the unincorporated organisation Hands on History, including at national museums and institutions such as London Museum, National Maritime Museum, Cutty Sark/Royal Museums Greenwich, City of London Livery Guilds, Emery Walker House, London's Roman Amphitheatre, Thames Festival Trust, and, coming in summer 2026, Bodiam Castle.
2011 – 2021
Mental Spaghetti
For ten years I ran an unincorporated arts and mental health organisation, Mental Spaghetti, working as an artist educator, curator and arts producer. I worked on a wide range of projects, from interactive performance pieces performed at galleries and museums to co-curating festivals and facilitating group exhibitions with residents of forensic psychology secure units, including The Wellcome Collection, Herbert Gallery, YMCA, Bethlem Museum of the Mind, MIND, Queen Mary University, William Morris Gallery, and Vestry House Museum.
Published Work (visual art and written work) //
I have had several essays, poetry, and short stories published, both in print and online, including:
2023 – 2026 When a Collector Stops Collecting (essay) – Psyche magazine // Accidental Artemis (short story) – Tough Poets Press // Fun Lovin’ Liminals (poetry) // Now the Author of the Glazed Water (poetry) // Action Spectacle (poetry) // Haus-a-Rest (poetry) // Shine Poetry Anthology (poetry) // Mudlarking (essay) - The Idler // The Caterpillar magazinr (illustrating poetry by John Hegley) // Big Team Scribble Colouring Book – The Scribble Project // The Bill Murray Colouring Book – Belly Kids
Guest Lecturer/Public Speaking //
I have been booked as a guest lecturer and speaker in the fields of art and heritage, and art and mental health, to work with a varied audience, from PhD students to mental health service users, including:
> 'Fr-iction', Royal College of Art London, UK, Visual Comms PHD group
> ‘Creative Arts & Mental Health’, Queen Mary University London, UK
> ‘Mental Health in the Media’, Bournemouth University, Faculty of Media/Comms
> ‘ReThink Psychiatry’, The Dragon Café London, UK
Teaching/Outreach 2010 – 2026 //
Teaching and outreach, between 2011 – 2026, in the fields of mental health and arts, and heritage and arts, including:
Greenwich in 50 Objects, Royal Museums Greenwich // Freedom to Express – audiovisual SEND workshops, Free Space Project London, UK // Diagnostic Portraiture, Drawing workshop - Vestry House Museum London, UK // Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival - Illustration workshop // Drawing workshops - The Big Draw, London, UK // Inside Out : Outside In - Medium Secure Unit residents exhibition, The Dragon Café London, UK
© marielouiseplum.com 2022