My practice is multifaceted and I work in mediums including sound, sculpture, smell, film, installation and performance. I seek to re-evaluate the use and meaning of functional spaces, objects and devices, questioning aspects of human activity through both division and connection. I often examine the urge for efficiency within processes of regulation, normalisation and separation. in our relationships with other species, cultures and traditions.
My current interests and research has been focussed on the division held between “us” (humans) and other species, looking into the culture we have towards cattle, dairy agriculture and urban wildlife. I am interested in the two different types of symbiotic relationships including mutualism and commensalism. Within my practice I try to playfully question these relationships and the norms that we define ourselves through by creating artwork that might interrupt or obstruct us both physically and psychologically. My most resent installation and on-going project surrounds our human relationship with ‘Cattle’ in which I created a decorative cattle grid, a trough with hoof print cut into the surface and hoof shaped tap dance shoes as part of a costume for a performance. Each element playing with the functionality versus aesthetic of the device used in the division amongst cattle.
Often I take research from two or more subjects and find ways in which I can use them in parallel even if there is at first no direct link. I like to play with different subject matters in order to create something from a different perspective. I often use situated sound and smell as a material to challenge, affect and shift a space so that a new context may be triggered. Having a studio will allow me to listen back to these sounds in a neutral space with no pre-existing interruptions or link to the place in which it was created enabling me to perceive a different understanding of it. My work on cattle also includes an interest in herding techniques so I’d use the studio to research and map out these findings. I plan to work with local dancers to create a choreographed piece or score surrounding cattle herding therefore using the space for laying out elongated graphic scores, mapping performance, costume making and sculpture.
