Untitled, 2011, photographic print
Untitled, 2012, porcelain, string, metal
I am not myself am I not, 2011, mixed media, dimensions variable
I am not myself am I not, 2011, mixed media, dimensions variable
I am not myself am I not, 2011, mixed media, dimensions variable
Artists' statement
I am interested in the power of strangeness. As a device I believe strangeness is as effective as horror or humour. In my work I like to explore this power, utilizing it to create surprising and unsettling pieces, which inhabit the halfway point within a dichotomy of opposing forces.
I am very interested in the contrasts within a work and the conflict this may create in the experience of the viewer. I like my work to be seductive but simultaneously repellent. It is interesting to draw the audience into the space of the work whilst at the same time exposing them to something unnerving and unpredictable. There must always be a dark edge to the seduction. Beauty is important to me, but it is important in its relationship to the grotesque. Pure beauty is not so interesting as beauty that is infected and spoiled. There must be imperfection.
Within my practice I have no fixed media. I move from delicate pencil drawings to highly augmented photographic prints, from experiments in sound and animation to installations comprising animatronics and video. All of my work however is concerned with the abject and the liminal, the in-between and the outcasted. It pays homage to the difficult transitions of human life; the ascension from child to adolescent, from adolescent to adult and our confrontation with the body’s decline as we come to the realization that our immortality was just a dream of our childish selves. It is concerned with what I perceive as the universal fears of life: death, iolation, wasted time, wasted opportunity, and the inevitable descent into a dull, repetitious life of pre-ordained obscurity.