Artist Statement

If a child was asked to draw their internal organs, they would do so not informed by medical textbooks or whatever cursory knowledge an adult may have of human anatomy, but would draw from a perspective of sensation, imagination and visualisation. As we age, the intellect takes over and this somatic connection becomes more tenuous and less sensory.

I am artist with a continuous, holistic interest in the breakdown of meaning and reclamation of intuition. I build work from a liminal space in the mind, somewhere between feeling and thinking, connecting to the pre-intellectual understanding of the world that all humans have.

The combination of craft based skills and an ability to surrender to the unknowable allows me to make work that restages the body as a sensory experience rather than a functioning object.

An understanding of the properties and cultural context of my materials is essential to my practice, bringing me to work with terra-cotta, porcelain, bronze and wax, materials which have been harvested, dug, and used for centuries to form the artefacts from which we have built technology and society.

Paring back to these essential foundations of physical knowledge, I use hand building methods to cast, coil and pinch sculptures which embrace ambiguity in their inference of the body.

The use of these methods of making is rooted in a reverence for the traditions, cycles and rituals that humans use to bring meaning to the passage of time.

 The sculptural work is made to honour the body and the subjugated aspects of humanity, currently with a focus on the 60+ sphincters in the body. My sound building work is made with an interest in phonetic expression without the constricts of language or meaning. The ability to express from a primal place, unconcerned with social convention, relates to my ongoing research of feminism and the abject.

 This socially engaged project is ongoing with workshops, performances and experimentation, working towards a possible large scale production engaging the visual and phonetic with my interest in social collaboration.

My broad and conflicting interest in the body and religion have empowered a working process that pushes boundaries, observing irony and respect for each individual physical function.