I am recent graduate from the University of Salford having obtained a first class honours Bachelor of Arts Degree in Visual Arts.
As an artist central focus of investigation lies within the environment and the concept of fragments of time along with the study of surface, mark and line. This is not simply a visual preoccupation focusing on physical attributes but also includes factors such as memory, history and identity. I am fascinated by the way in which we as individuals leave our mark or imprint on the environment as well as the environments influence on the self.
Expression of ideas occurs through the examination of site, what the writer Marina Warner describes as ‘memory mapping’. This involves combining personal experience, biography, history, fiction, architecture, artefacts and aesthetics as an aid to articulate the complexities of people and places. An engagement with materials and process to stimulate associations is central.
As such, I would describe myself as a material and process based artist concerned with narrative and the physical act.
To date attention has focused on the exploration of the Northern landscape; it is not only the region in which I grew up but also the place in which I live and work today. Manifestation of this within resulting works has involved the investigation of the site’s industrial and textile legacy and its impact and erasure of individual lives. As a result fibre has become an important media to express ideas with meaning being assigned to the habitual act of making. Notions such as making visible what goes unseen, nature versus nurture and ritual and representation have taken on greater emphasis with the woven line as text coming to the fore.
Through thoughts of the environment and identity the exploration of site as a place of excavation has extended to include the self both as an isolated individual and as part of a wider group defined by gender. This natural progression has seen the introduction of the use of myth and archetype and the concept of ‘un-making’ or unravelling. The resulting forms, which enter the realm of the psychological and symbolic, exist as small spiritual entities, evocative of the body, coded as feminine, shaped not only by memories embedded in the environment but also by my own personal life experiences.
As an artist central focus of investigation lies within the environment and the concept of fragments of time along with the study of surface, mark and line. This is not simply a visual preoccupation focusing on physical attributes but also includes factors such as memory, history and identity. I am fascinated by the way in which we as individuals leave our mark or imprint on the environment as well as the environments influence on the self.
Expression of ideas occurs through the examination of site, what the writer Marina Warner describes as ‘memory mapping’. This involves combining personal experience, biography, history, fiction, architecture, artefacts and aesthetics as an aid to articulate the complexities of people and places. An engagement with materials and process to stimulate associations is central.
As such, I would describe myself as a material and process based artist concerned with narrative and the physical act.
To date attention has focused on the exploration of the Northern landscape; it is not only the region in which I grew up but also the place in which I live and work today. Manifestation of this within resulting works has involved the investigation of the site’s industrial and textile legacy and its impact and erasure of individual lives. As a result fibre has become an important media to express ideas with meaning being assigned to the habitual act of making. Notions such as making visible what goes unseen, nature versus nurture and ritual and representation have taken on greater emphasis with the woven line as text coming to the fore.
Through thoughts of the environment and identity the exploration of site as a place of excavation has extended to include the self both as an isolated individual and as part of a wider group defined by gender. This natural progression has seen the introduction of the use of myth and archetype and the concept of ‘un-making’ or unravelling. The resulting forms, which enter the realm of the psychological and symbolic, exist as small spiritual entities, evocative of the body, coded as feminine, shaped not only by memories embedded in the environment but also by my own personal life experiences.