Statement

When I was sixteen we lived in a tall thin house. We got a new rope fire escape and had to practise using it. I put the rope like a noose round my torso and climbed out of the top storey window. One of my brothers was in the room egging me on. My stepmother was there too, killing herself laughing and my other brother was outside trying to look up my skirt. I could see that the rope was loose and I was going to drop several feet before the slack was taken up. I couldn’t get any words out. In the end I had to let go.

The playfulness of language, the multiplicity of meaning held within words and objects, and the possibilities offered by everyday materials sit at the core of my practice. 

Drawing is my way in: a form of communication closest to writing and talking without words. It is immediate, materially simple and intuitive, requiring very little and accessible to most of us from an early age. My drawing practice begins with the man-made detritus I collect from roadsides and footpaths. I draw directly with found materials or flatten and enlarge their outlines into templates, generating repetitive marks in ink, pen and graphite on found papers.

Collecting is an ongoing part of my practice, a way of attending to the meanings, suggestions, memories and emotions that accumulate around objects. These incidental materials also extend into my sculptural work and short-film collaborations, which incorporate human hair and teeth, blankets, furniture and domestic items. Working in close proximity to the body, these works explore messy human experience. 

Humour is an essential counterbalance to the escalating fear, hatred and power at play in society. It offers a way to approach the uncomfortable, absurd and often contradictory aspects of lived experience, from gendered imbalances and brain disease to local, family and societal politics, as well as the ongoing effort of sustaining a thriving art practice. Through drawing, sculpture and film, I work with the unstable meanings of everyday things, making space for vulnerability, unease, tenderness and laughter to coexist.