My Practice (so far)

I am fascinated by the physical spaces we create and play with in childhood and the imaginary spaces that emerge from this. This idea stemmed from spending a considerable time at my Grandmother's farm during my childhood, which was mainly spent exploring the out houses and sheds and converting them into dens and hideouts. I wanted to express and explore this in someway during my first year of university and that initial idea evolved and progressed throughout my entire university career.

I focused on notions of imagined spaces and memories based on textural qualities found in architectural structures, with three dimensional spaces revealed within these works. I represented these ideas in a traditional painterly practice, along side other media and materials such as de-constructed and reassembled photographs of abandoned buildings, as a means of creating new imagined spaces.

This piece is called 'Carceri 2', (basically all the work I produced at uni is apart of a series called Carceri) and i think that it's a pretty good representation of what my work looks like.

However, as I have matured my practice concepts around topophobia, the fear of place, and vertiginous feelings have become increasingly apparent, creating an interesting juxtaposition to the initial origins the work. “Our fears today are less about openness and more about a general uncertainty surrounding the perception of space itself.”, Dr Caterina Albano, 2011.

My work is hugely influenced by the writings by Italo Calvino,Gordon Matta-Clark's and Emily Speed.

Gordon Matta-Clark

Emily Speed

At university I worked on large scale paintings that travel around corners or other architectural features and I started to use string in an endeavor to bring the work out in to physical space that the public inhabits. I work predominantly on both thin cardboard and cartridge paper as I feel that it potentially provides the fragile surface that attempts to capture the precarious spaces I am investigating.

I investigated combining and siting these pieces in relation to one another in an attempt to create other physical spaces and dialogues that aim to reinforce and heighten the sense of real and imagined spaces. This has was taken further through arrangements of wall-based pieces being linked by linear drawings as a means of create a subtle balance between collaged and painterly elements as well as connecting surrounding space and merging the work into the given architecture. 

This is an example of the small pieces that i would make (generally just on food packaging card) and then arrange of the wall and join together with connecting lines.

And it is this idea that I have decide to continue with after university, I like the idea of developing it so that whether it is placed it will be different and specific to that place according to what architectural features there are within the work.