Artist's Statement

“I believe that art is the only form of activity in which man shows himself to be a true individual. Only in art is he capable of going beyond the animal state, because art is an outlet towards regions which are not ruled by time and space.”

Marcel Duchamp, 1956

My practice is strongly connected to my personal experiences and one of the experiences which has influenced me was working for an organisation which looks after the interests of people who have suffered a brain injury. I am interested in how our memories and cognitive function inform our identities, and this as well as other personal experiences has given me an understanding, which affects how I approach my practice. I build installations that consist of drawing, painting and found objects with an aim to illustrate and redraw from memory and create an alternative space-time. The main concept is that memories shape the self and our perceptions of the world. They are constantly re-imagined and alter with time, and by reinstalling a representation of remembered place onto a space, one can transcend time and space. The installations are temporary in their nature, placing them within a relevant context to my practice.

Chance is an important element in my work. I am more interested in immediate and instinctive mark-making than the aesthetic, and I believe failure must be embraced in order to create a possibility for the creative and the radical. Part of my process is translation. I make drawings from memory, usually without looking at the page (to concentrate on the original memories rather than the aesthetic produced, and to introduce elements of chance) and draw often in a continuous line with biro on paper. I then translate these 2D drawings into 3D form, re-drawing them in space using sculptural materials and found objects. I find the process of remembering linked to the process of re-working and translation that I undertake.

In recreating from my memories and personal experiences, I create temporary installations which will only survive in traces though their documentation, but exist in their entirety through the physical experience of the work, which then constitutes to the memories and experiences of the viewer, creating a collective memory out of my own imagined reality. Another of my concerns is that of the inclusion of the viewer within the work of art. Not in a participatory role such as is the case within performance art, but purely by being immersed within the space of the work and the experience one has whilst they are incorporated into it. My intention is to break down the space between work of art and viewer in order to make the work more inclusive and democratic. I have done this by painting a whole space rather than producing a painting on a 2D surface, which the viewer then enters and becomes a part of the work. In this way I aim to form some common ground with the viewer, rather than the work being singular or exclusive.

I utilise the domestic within my narrative which provides a familiar and shared environment as a way into the work. I often reuse objects or re-work a previous installation in order to form a continuum and natural progression over the course of the period of production of the works and in doing so, form a narrative through the translations and copies which are made, which relates to the nature of cognitive function and our experience of the world.

My work serves as a temporary substitute for something which is and continues to be absent, and which cannot be represented and therefore in it's nature it can inevitably only fail.