“Art and work and art and life are very connected and my whole life has been absurd. There isn’t a thing in my life that has happened that hasn’t been extreme – personal health, family, economic situations…absurdity is the key word.” Eva Hesse

My artworks tell stories, evoke memories and offer a sense of place to the viewer. Using a variety of media, the stories told are fictional and evolve from an event, an object or an experience. Found objects, texts or observations may give life to an idea. Books, toys and games are often used as vehicles to carry these narratives.

I build models of dream-like structures – uninhabitable buildings with unexplained openings. Packaging material, cardboard boxes and a wealth of other recycled materials are used. The structures are developed and tested using drawing, painting and printmaking.

Stories are fundamental to the works I create and their visual impact is important in conveying these narratives. Colourful scenarios depicting fairground or carnival imagery and text arouse feelings of fear and excitement. Red and white stripes signify joy and fear, referencing the barber’s pole, a nod to the darker origins of bloodletting. Artworks are rooms with hidden passages, inviting entrances, holes to unknown depths. Faceless figures of antiquity, paired with brightly coloured figurines, conjure a sense of magic and mysticism.

Humour and the often chaotic senselessness of life are present here.  The viewer is left to ponder the blurred lines between truth, fiction and reality. The work creates a clear and balanced understanding of a changing world, offering the viewer one solution to the abundance of absurdities presented to us socially and politically in our contemporary life.