I am a storyteller of found objects. Making with my left hands, feeling materials, smelling them, and listening as they become re-purposed, reborn sculptural forms. Using materials that bubble with ready-made narrative, allows me a safe play space to explore personal trauma. Faced with cancer twice and the loss of my boobs twice (believe me it is possible) my practice is a happy place. Working with bricolage, foraged plastics, and fabric, I explore pain and grief. A mother, grandmother, being a woman and more importantly feeling it, centers me. Currently, I am pondering my post-cancer, post-return prevention body.
Imaginative play with cotton reels and dressmaking pins under her grandmother's sewing machine in London informed Gooden's storytelling from an early age. Having graduated with a first-class (hons) degree in fine art from Nottingham Trent University this summer, as a mature student, the artist is now studying for her MFA. Whilst at university Gooden she curated the Twichel Gallery. Since graduating she has been elected to the membership of Leicester Society of Arts and joined the community of Two Queens Gallery, Leicester. Gooden has exhibited work and performed across the Midlands this summer in a total of four exhibitions.
