Body of Evidence

As an artist, I am very much process driven in my approach to artmaking, particularly in early stages. I rarely, if at all, have conscious deliberate idea/s in mind, and if I do, these usually arise during the process of making and playing with materials. It is a form of “play” and sometimes I liken it to “making mud pies” (in early stages particularly).

However, over time and at various points I will stop “making” to sit back to quietly “look” at what I am doing with a more critical and reflective eye/mind. At these times associations, metaphors, emotions, memories (both past and more recent), personal, socio political, historical, ecological and geological ponderings tend to arise and a process of linking and weaving some of these into my approach to working (or a keeping of them in mind) and the direction it might take becomes a part of the overall process. These are also a time when I consider composition, placement and other technical considerations.

I work with mixed and (at times) multimedia using found objects, materials, everyday items, trash, junk…what ever captures my eye or imagination…and using whatever it takes to get the job done (which sometimes mean I need/choose to learn some new technical skills to achieve this).

Once my works are on “show” in a way they are no longer mine and my intention is to not “explain” my work too much (if at all) or to encourage viewers to attempt to ‘decipher” what it says about me at more personal level. Indeed, I would rather the viewer takes time to be with the work and to notice whatever might arise for them in the process of looking, whether that be uncomfortable and/or otherwise.

I try not to make work to please, appease, comfort or lull anyone into false sense of security and certainty about the world we live in. I know from my own (at times harrowing) lived experience that it can be frightening, exhausting and takes courage to stay present to the deep discomforts of life in a world that can feel and is unsafe, but I also know that too much avoidance of this can become a trap (the trap that has been made for us and not of our own making?).

My work is perhaps a way I straddle and manage this dilemma in my own life. The whole process for me (more personally) is an alchemical one and one that allows contradictions, uneasy, discomforting connections and feelings, an embracing of all this in a way that can be enriching, expansive and honors the “hybrids” (the canaries in the coal mines?) amongst us who are too often pathologized, ostracized and scapegoated. Have courage.

I currently lecture at the Western Sydney University into the Master of Art (psycho) Therapy, under School of Social Sciences. You can contact me via EMAIL – CLICK HERE.