UNCERTAIN STATES : ARTIST STATEMENT

Lostness, Uncertainty, Disempowerment, Precarity and Fragility.

I am exploring ideas of apprehension in the current ecological crisis and global political chaos. The vulnerability of humanity exacerbated by the abuse and violation of earth’s resources, and the recognition of the interconnectivity of all living organisms, while acknowledging impermanence, Anicca.

My ideas are reflected in cold, hard metals, fragile sharp glass, and degradable papers: materials that decay and atrophy with time, waste materials that have been discarded, abandoned. Creating a dialogue between the natural world; the living breathing organism and the man-made; a symbiosis, an antibiosis.

On canvas, lone figures, empty streets, husks of buildings in vast landscapes stretch to infinity using pigments from rust, and organic materials. On metal, layers of steel, and copper are degraded using natural processes of corrosion, and decay from the wind, rain, and sun. Harnessed in a controlled environment using a mix of corrosive substances, and vegetation they are corrupted to a point of fragility, a breaking point. The rich tones that emerge in the process reveal sublime colours of pollution. The papers, metals, and minerals have been returned to a more precarious state. The materials are then carefully ‘re-worked’, printed, and imprinted, or welded together in sculptural form for connective installation.

The fragility of glass, is a container for the rust dust, or acid effluent of decay. Having started as manufactured product, the resulting processes convey an organic return, an unrefined quality, the paper torn and fragile, the canvas razed and rough, the metal crude and indelicate, expressing a vulnerability with razor-sharp edges. The works become a collaborative theatre interacting and connecting with each other. A cube, small and vulnerable hangs in precarious isolation on the wall. A field of instability, a wasteland of objects, a sense of society collapsed, a sense of loss.