In my work I’ve been chasing a form of gothic sublime in the domestic everyday. Personal imagery is compiled, cropped, compressed, and pieced back together - physically and virtually - in composed, claustrophobic documentations of domestic life. Currently I’m making small scale works using handmade paper and plaster strips, ripping, painting and collaging the materials to create anxious, clustered spaces. Intricately rendered fragments lead into areas suggestive of decay and fragility, whilst representation sits on top of bulging texture, warping and abstracting spaces once familiar.
I often draw on the liminal in-between time of twilight to access moments suspended in transition, transforming familiar suburban settings into sinister, uncanny dwellings blanketed in mystery and quiet possibility. Glowing windows and apertures allude to hidden narratives the viewer is excluded from, putting emphasis on the separation between public and private. I imagine the work existing as a combined mental architecture, with corridors to different rooms, doors firmly closed and sites carrying the stain of memories or trauma.
With isolation, unease and the home having been the focus of my work for years, it has been a strange but also an interesting experience to have been thrust into this alternate way of life during the current pandemic and try to navigate ways of working within it. Recently, translating these universal experiences seems more urgent to me now than ever.
“Thresholds”
“Dealing With Damp”
“Threadbare”
“Waiting in the Car”
“Nook”
“Burrow”
