THE
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WELL
DOES
IT?

My work is concerned with object/context relationships and explores a gamut of ideas and methods in order to arrive at a finished product.

In recent years I have developed a photographic practice that has enabled me to extrapolate ready-made objects from environments I have been influenced by, and regurgitate them to a desired effect.

This "still life" photography, highlights the qualities in the objects that I would like to pronounce, and in most cases, by juxtaposing them with particular scenarios, subverts our expectations towards them. The sensation of the uncanny is achieved through a disjunction in the work, due to the contrasting elements that have been combined, that allows the viewer to speculate the real and the imaginary and therefore may lend itself to the ideologies of the surrealists. I am interested in the connection between the real and the unreal, the physical and the non -physical and note the works of Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes (amongst others, Franz Kafka for that existentialist point of view) to be beneficial to my research.

I like to think that I am working within a certain set of rules that is similar to artists that use the constructed image, yet what distinguishes my work from this genre of contemporary photography is the perversion of scale that I use as a device to bring the ironies in my work to the forefront of the viewer’s attention. Indeed there is an element of entertainment to this scale gimmick that I feel is crucial in capturing the attention of the viewer so that they can then speculate the underlying facets to the work. These being the geo-social and political connotations that manifest themselves as explorations of class/ taste and identity.

My experiences in Asia enabled me to further understand the value of any given object depending on where the object happened to find itself. Almost any item from toothpaste to livestock, real estate to human life was open to question and the utilitarian, social, cultural and monetary qualities that each had were ambiguous (perhaps priceless) in the sense that they had no value until it was determined by a given situation.

In summary, I feel that my work is about extremes and I continue to pursue this. Works like "Banandosh" and "Hero" from the 18 Fortis Green series (an interpretation of my childhood home from memory) stand as totems to the romantic ideas of hope and aspiration, yet maintain a sense of grounding on various different obvious and less obvious ways. Whilst more recent works like "Slut", "Lips" and "Orgy", become parody’s of themselves, and poke fun at the art world and the idea of art as a commodity. The free -standing sculptures add another dimension to the dialogue between fact and fiction.

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ALLORA &
CALZA-
DILLA

TUNE IN
NOW

KILL
PIXIE
HERE