My practice explores a discontent with digital culture’s obsession with the instant. It values the hand-made, the skillful and crafted over the transient and swiftly up-gradable. In his book The Craftsman (2008), Richard Sennett wrote that we are in danger of losing ourselves if we negate the skills of craftsmanship that have historically supported the acquisition of meaning in our lives. Instead of the constant distraction and rapid change of the digital, Sennett suggests that we should celebrate processes of creativity that involve slowness, carefulness and contemplation. I work through these ideas in my practice, reflecting Sennett’s methodology through the meticulous re-working of found material into skillfully constructed narratives.

 

Working in collage, printmaking and assemblage, I use fragments of popular culture to create a mash-up of visual and historical referents. I am fascinated with the beauty that arises when things become damaged, decayed or transformed. By re-purposing everyday detritus I explore ways to reveal the inner potential ‘life’ of a given material or object. My work is loaded with information; sensual and temporal, re-contextualised into new realities and installed to create physically and emotionally immersive experiences. By juxtaposing objects, images and sounds in simulated environments I am interested in challenging the comfortable distance between art and its audience, and to enforce the significance of the tangible in a largely virtual world.