My work is currently based heavily in writing and narrative, further displayed through mediums of painting, text and sculpture to create immersive installations. My practice has explored the sinister side of heightened desire, power and emotions, a setting for escapism, glamour and uncertainty. The ironic value of Camp aesthetics along with circus and fairground devices allow me to investigate and create a double-headed hedonistic set-up where clues and characters are introduced in order to question intimacy, gender, sex and material excess.
I have been fascinated with monster trucks and variations of anthropomorphic vehicles in my narrative as representations of desire and grief. Both big vehicles and fairgrounds as visions for ideas of voluntary and romanticized chaos, heightened. A love letter to monster trucks, a sext to oil rigs. The theatrical value of a monster trucks adds to this with its only function to perform, to crush and demonstrate power, I only reinforce the aesthetically gloopy petrol and roaring engine as lovable traits. My research not only lays within the themes above but also using humour and playfulness as ‘coping mechanisms’ or to counteract more sinister themes, a fine balance between comfort and uncomfortable with double meanings and play on words.
Before lockdown, I had begun developing my practise into a series of petrol puddles from resin and objects which resonate with my text such as a golden shoe or a broken car wheel and fairground ride signs which lit up parts of my text. The colours and expectation of the circus and fairground, the highs and the lows envelop an ideal for an anticlimactic ending or a twist in perception. Quite appropriate for the sensationalismand frenzy built up in our mid-pandemic world.
My final year at Newcastle was abruptly brought to an end, unable to encapsulate an atmosphere in a space, limiting my work to an online platform. Studio space would allow me to participate in workshops discussions and space to expand the limitations of institutional spaces and develop a professional, growing practise.
‘You see there are two sides of a coin, heads up or tails down . Either way your wicked side will one day come and race you around town.’
