About

Artist statement

Through intermedia artworks I make poetic gestures that hold and address multiple truths. I use worlding techniques to celebrate the complex (eco)systems with which we are submerged, whilst offering meditations on possible alternative structures for being. My art practice is research and play based, nested in the variables of systems. A ‘system’ might be a plant, an ecosystem, a body, a community, a city, or a machine. The system simultaneously controls and relies on the smaller parts of which it is made. I am fascinated by such contradictions, and they frequently inform my research and work.

Play is an incubator for serious thought and fertile ground for unexpected discoveries. This philosophy is reflected in both my methodology and my finished artworks. My research process is involved, continuous and cumulative. It is grounded in paying attention and often begins as seeds of ideas that I gather whilst walking. Through material explorations and play these seeds radicalize and evolve. I complicate the work through layered references: childhood games, folklore, mythology, and science fiction. I distill the work, leaving these complexities ingrained. New works are informed by previous ones – in this way, all of my work is research.

My artwork responds to the place where it is installed or lives and frequently takes the form of intermedia and participatory systems/installations. I consider the term ‘site-specific’ to be a verb, an event. It can refer to a ‘place’ in its totality; its history, context, community, but it can also be time based: an action, a movement, a moment. The specifics of these sites – phenomenological, ecological, social, political, cosmological – inform my research and art-making process, giving the work authentic meaning. My installations are activated by the viewer. In this way, the viewer becomes a participant. I endeavor to empower the communities for whom I make my work, and to demystify and democratize the art-making process. I combine both analog and technological means of production. Through a combination of hand-made objects (of clay, wood, metal, plaster, found objects, and natural materials), technology (coding, video, sound), as well as performative acts, text, and installation, I offer something of myself to those who generously give their time to engage with my work.