From a young age, I have had a strong sense that things aren’t right.
As Capitalism is failing, our agency is reducing with it – how do we get Capitalism out of our head? How do we take back our agency? My philosophical practice challenges what I know about the world, asking others to do so also, so that we can co-create better futures.
Capitalism is a skilled storyteller, so I try to counter its stories with my own. My stories about resistance to conflict and control, draw from history and current affairs, blending fact and fiction with personal biography, my own fragility and wry humour. The ideas have travelled a long way, the leaky themes and costumes cross projects.
Approaching each work as a painter that often chooses not to paint, finding painting historically impossible, I start with the desire to retrieve history painting’s sublated good. I am interested in the outmoded and problematic genre’s accessibility, ability to communicate with diverse audiences and the public it created. Thinking about new ways of telling and imaging history in a multimedia era, leads me to mix traditional processes with interactive and broadcast technologies.
Like the history painter of the past, my research goes through a lengthy process: writing, collaging, drawing, storyboarding, making. Crafted with precision and slow labour, it’s a process of construction and collaboration across disciplines. From room-sized graphic novels that people can walk around, the characters drawn in pencil and ink on paper, gesso on board, and painted in oil on laser-cut powder-coated steel, activated by Arduino circuits and proximity sensors, to 3D characters and environments, animation, digital film, and handmade costumes and props. Recently collaborating with AI. The works are unapologetically wonky. Tender, funny, political, soulful, conflicting, sad, with a largely black and white aesthetic.
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