I am a studio-based practitioner, working in sculpture and photography. I often make things I can wear or use in a performative sense. Presenting themselves as possible artefacts or specimens, the objects I create are gadgets, adornments or trophies that I collect. Acting as props the objects imply function and substantiate the fabrication of the myth or inferred narratives I create. The photography acts as a document of the experience, it also sets up a fantastic space.
I have adopted the persona of the scientist, explorer and philanthropist. The invention of my specimens is inherent to developing these personas. The organic fibres I work with to create the animate beings provide the specimens with a sense of ‘realness’ and although they are convincing, there is a point at which the work reveals itself as a hoax. The work begins to collapse through the realisation that the objects are constructed from every day mundane materials. The transformation of the materials is an important aspect of the work, setting up a tension between what we believe we are looking at and the prosaic every-day. Sometimes commenting on the domestic or private space, I use materials I find around me such as elastic bands, brown paper, greaseproof paper, Selotape, parcel tape and dried plants.
Based in a need to escape, our fascination for the unexplained blurs the relationship between fact and fiction. Appealing to our own curiosity the work sets up a strange relationship where fantasy draws on reality and creates a strange authenticity and value, in turn, questioning our belief systems and the process by which history is written and established as truth.