All Tied Up

Artist Statement

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Here is my artist statement to help outline things i am interested within my work and what my work intends to do in the spaces i use.

Colour space and audience interaction have in recent years become increasing important within my work. I have always been interested in how the repulsive and disturbing/abject can be extremely beautiful. Within this interest I have tried to create environments that appear eerie, sinister and chaotic, which in fact have a degree of structure and order. I am also beginning to try to exploit light and shadow through these installations.

My decision to work solely with wool is a very conscious decision. Through limiting myself to one medium that is very available, cost effective and a material that holds strong connotations of women I have been able to analyse what it is I prefer about this material and why I like it. Which hopefully should allow me to begin using other materials that communicate my intentions even more effectively than wool through installations but for the moment the colour and shape within the environments which I form the work come from the associations of the medium; warmth, arts and crafts, knitting/ crochet: the work of women. The material is transformed with interaction with strong obtrusively angular and masculine structures. which is derivative of my life drawings and my study of male and female nudes.

The audience is extremely important to me. The work is only ever validated by the people who engaged with it. My intention, or my hope is, that anyone who interacts with my work will feel uncomfortable either through atmosphere (created by colour, light, shape or sound) or through the physical way they are enticed into and forced to move through the space.

In recent shows I have found that my most successful process or method for making art is often trial and error as the work I make is often a response to the site. By improvising with collaborators, or setting challenges or problems for my self I am able to develop and analyse my work more objectively and discard elements I feel don't work for some of my installations. This seems to build on my ability to produce more successful installations each time.

In the past few months: artists such as Chiaharu Shiota, Claire Barclay, Jim Lambie have influenced my approach to installation works. Others like Bridget Riley, Paul Dignan for their use of colour and line along with personal favourites such as Helen Chadwick, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville for the themes explored within their work and artists like Mark Dion and Patricia Piccinin for their approaches to developing ideas and their ability to bridge gaps between fact and fiction which has been a big interest in my artistic practice. Tracy Emin, Rosemarie Trockel and Annette Messanger's appliance of crafts used within their work influences my own and how I am often drawn towards issues of gender through 'women's work'.

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