BA (Hons) Fine Art
Through the form of sculpture my work engages with imitative, illusory, aspirational and iconographic materials and objects. Wood vinyl, floating shelves and the Gmail logo are some examples of such components in the works. There is an underlying strand of interest in the ideological implications that arise in these materialsâ, objectsâ and iconsâ distance from âreal thingsâ. From this platform, in the components of the sculpture, a slip between image, object and surface can be found. Through light intervention (often digital printmaking) and arrangement processes my work playfully engages with a contemporary instability in how we understand such items. Running parallel to my work is an on going engagement with historical and contemporary approaches to meta-critique in comedy and experimental literature. From this theoretical basis a general interest in representation and critique can be seen to negotiate the choice and appropriation of components in my work. Such interests have enabled me to look at these objects as existing in a post-human/ material state where distinctions between image object and surface, between weight and weightlessness, reality and non-reality are tightly fused. Through a web of contraries an on-going enquiry into the successes and failures of representation can be found in the sculptures formally shown. Caught up in a self-depreciating attitude, humour can be felt to interject the sculptures at various points though way of by-product. There is a strained relationship with materials, intervention and arrangement that alludes to a more literary approach to objects. In this space components are posed for consideration as opposed to resolution. This renders a much slower encounter in its request for a more literary engagement. In the processes behind my work intuitive decision-making co-exists with drawn out investigations. Vast quantities of materials are often collated. Through experimentation I seek to tease out contraries, tensions and harmonies between materials and objects and the possible contexts that can be activated through their display. From this point an additive and highly reductive process continues up until the work is formally shown. Subject to this dialogic nature of investigation the work ultimately exists as a moment in an on-going enquiry. Subsequent to both my interests and processes, the works exist in a constant state of flux â committed to an overall lack of commitment. It is in this way that my work pays homage to contemporary approaches to meta-critique.