ARTIST STATEMENT
My initial thematic interest was 'transience', represented by clouds in small sculptures and in an early installation of a mock kit for amateur meteorologists or cloud spotters. I referred to amateurs, hobbyists and their ilk in the forms and aesthetics I borrowed from their domain: kinetic and wooden toys, tools and DIY projects.
With hindsight, I can also see the unconscious emergence and iteration of other motifs in early works: birdhouses and wing forms. Like clouds, these refer to the zone above our earthly realm. Birds, flight and clouds all describe, for me, through contrast, how very earthbound we are.
Since 2006, my principal methodology has been to reconfigure whatever objects and materials are at hand. Over time, my objects have more overtly referred to anxiety, loss, sorrow and spirituality:
My initial thematic interest was 'transience', represented by clouds in small sculptures and in an early installation of a mock kit for amateur meteorologists or cloud spotters. I referred to amateurs, hobbyists and their ilk in the forms and aesthetics I borrowed from their domain: kinetic and wooden toys, tools and DIY projects.
With hindsight, I can also see the unconscious emergence and iteration of other motifs in early works: birdhouses and wing forms. Like clouds, these refer to the zone above our earthly realm. Birds, flight and clouds all describe, for me, through contrast, how very earthbound we are.
Since 2006, my principal methodology has been to reconfigure whatever objects and materials are at hand. Over time, my objects have more overtly referred to anxiety, loss, sorrow and spirituality:
- a quiet and desperate affirmation that "Everything is ok today" freed from the noisy page of a novel through erasure;
- a small memorial made from gun parts;
- medals for a Bentley man who returned from a POW camp to find his girlfriend had married someone else; and
- wooden priest figures that describe the collision between Catholic and Indigenous paradigms at New Norcia.