I have always been drawn to dark subject matter and am intrigued by our human capacity for cruelty. Growing up, fear unconsciously buried itself in my mind due to the constant stream of news and frenzied tabloid articles reporting serial killers and child abductors. Despite being six years old, I had a very strong reaction to these events and became anxious, particularly thinking about the victims.

My work is underpinned by a desire to preserve memory and tell a story. I use well-worn objects, drawings, video and fragments of stories that conceal an untold past. By tenderly placing, distorting and manipulating these objects into new anatomies or functions, I offer a suggestive resolution.  Objects belong to the past, once a person’s present; the abruptness of death crystallizes their presence as a memory retained within these objects.

In a sense, I am forensically tracing the spirit and memories that remain in objects, allowing the viewer to meditate on the suggested absence of a person. I work with the idea that I am acting as a detective, however I do not claim to have a strong forensic understanding, wishing only to shadow their methodology. In seeing beyond peculiar individual fragments I hope to recognize a universal reflection of humanity; ‘what is most personal is also most universal’ – Robert Priseman.

Focusing on the idea of borders, my practice aims to engage interior elements of the body with external geometries, attempting to represent the breaching or consolidation of borders. Through an awareness of external space, investigations into the force of bodily presence and motion – in relation to specific objects, structures and architecture – attempt to question the body’s temporal empowerment of space. Body-space tensions explored through drawing, performance, video and photography, aim to identify both the formal and instinctive relationships our bodies have to external constructions.

A simple boundary defines and separates light and shadow, this dividing line can be found in the most subtle and simplest of places and it is from this that my work begins. The process starts with the recording of faint variations of light and the shadows that exist in between them. It is the random shapes of the boundary lines created that are of importance. I then combine and manipulate the lines to create a new series of marks. Through the layering and repetition of these new lines, a negative space is created which defined by the lines of previous shadows.
Ultimately my work is concerned with the capturing of light. Light and the shadows it casts create momentary ephemeral shapes that are uncontainable and unfixed. Through my work they are made solid and permanent. Light and shadow are transformed into frozen reminders of a once fragile fleeting moment, from these solid forms a new shadow and physical relationship with light can be developed.

Individual thought and action is dictated by the customs of society, full of illusions buried so deep within the psyche that they go unnoticed in ordinary life. Fallible perceptions of the senses and time, and the notion of a consistent personality underlying the individual, unconditioned by the pressures of circumstance, are some of the clearest examples of this.

My work is an exploration of the entrapment within both the societal climate into which we are adopted and the fragile and transient physical organism to which our consciousness is seemingly enchained, which requires regular and thorough maintenance to remain acceptable to the high standards of current society. Without a regular supply of food, water, and basic sanitary products we cannot survive in the manner to which we have become accustomed. We now have little choice but to rely upon an unsustainable globalized infrastructure in order to fulfil these basic requirements. Through the collective ambition of mankind, we have attained a mode of living not far removed from the traditional conception of God, yet daily activities seem increasingly hollow.

Technology is just beginning to unravel the mysteries of the universe that faith and mythology once accounted for. To free oneself from the trivialities of human life and death the notion of the self as an isolated and fleeting flash in the pan must be overcome. Mankind will raze the Earth in the absurd quest for immortality.

For the last two years my work has grown from the contents of my family archive. Photographs, negatives, vinyls, my Mother’s drawings and recorded conversations are collected, organised and recorded, becoming digital forms.
I pick through the various contents and seek to make new works from them; a photograph is picked apart, a drawing is made from a segment, another segment is collaged. These techniques are repeated in various ways as source materials are reinterpreted in different mediums. The work is free to become whatever it can; video, installation, sculpture and painting coalesce into a display of the different sources from which it is comprised.
Conversations between myself and my Mother form the main catalyst in the work’s production, whilst self-referential titling, drawn from these conversations, emphasises the link between art and life. Identifying the way in which source material becomes reinterpreted into art is the underlying concern in my practice, touching upon language, humour, the self-referential, memory, the questioning of traditional art forms and meanings, the real and fictional and the purpose and meaning within archives.

My central concern lies within the idea of ‘non-place’. Through photography and film I explore landscapes found on the margins of the city that are neither urban nor rural and therefore hold no real identity. In these in-between places architecture, landscape and the built environment often intersect and a dialogue – of absence rather than presence – is created.

The current boundary line of Newcastle is to me the true location of ‘non-place’ as it is the interface between town and country, consequently becoming a neutral zone. My work is therefore driven by an exploration of this invisible line. By capturing it, I am not only recreating it as something physical, but also recording my experience of walking the entire boundary.

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.

- Henry Rollins

I make paintings in which paint and its physical characteristics are a source for inspiration.  By dripping, pouring and splashing I let the paint itself dictate the forms and structures that will emerge within, creating a purely abstract painting.

I often work with the notion of deconstruction as construction, using fragments from the palettes of paintings past to create new ‘paintings’ where paint exists in its solid form without the traditional conventions of a support or canvas.

My work continues to explore my passion for paint as a physical substance.

Previously concerned with landscape, my work has progressed to an exploration of the sensation of painting and is primarily engaged with form, colour and composition.  Through the paintings I hope to tempt the viewer to seek a referent, in order to satisfy the urge to assign specific meaning. Recent practice has included radical approaches and strategies; intensity, irrationality and the violence of letting go take precedence over theory. This has largely been achieved through time restraints, subjecting the body and mind to 24hour painting stints and setting challenges to cover numbers of canvases within different time frames. The painting process is always in flux.

Through the use of coloured grounds, the first self -conscious act of mark making is removed. I aim to create tension between marks made with paint, and those made by the process of scraping away, exploring the constant push and pull between the addition and removal of paint. Each work seeks to present an exploration of the vacillation between abstraction and representation.

Materials define the world around us, providing visual and structural guidelines. It is the specific interaction between the industrial and the organic, bringing together conflicting elements and consolidating them, which drives my work. A material’s inherent quality will determine how I work and, influenced by geometry and geology, I explore materials scientifically as well as on an aesthetic level. Drawing allows me to experiment with scale and composition, in order to realize a sculpture’s full potential. I aim to juxtapose the traditional and contemporary, challenge preconceptions of constructional and natural materials, and employ them to preserve, repel, support and resist each other simultaneously.

I would like to thank Steve Hosty at Flexcrete for his generosity and support during the development of my work.