My installations revolve around liberating everyday domestic and DIY materials from consumer high-street shops into a still life composition. Throughout my studio processes, I accumulate various objects and textures as a form of sampling and testing out experiments or effects that I then amend into a space. For example, layers of builder’s sand, creamy body moisturiser, gloopy milk powder, vibrant tarpaulin, shimmering lip glosses, geometric insulation foams and stained carpets are transformed into visual assemblages.
I intend to reveal a sense of value that is often overlooked in easily accessible, common place materials through my material compositions. My work becomes a direct engagement with the consumer world to perform a kind of trickery by challenging the viewers expectations of a materials purpose and ability as seen in the installation, The Home of Temptation, 2017. For this piece, I began to utilise familiar-seeming materials which became isolated from their usual context through their reconfigurations, making them disjointed and hard to identify. An important aspect within my practice is the reference to the materials I am using in order to root my work in the physical world. It becomes an audible tool as the material information provided changes the viewers perspective of the work. As the viewer begins to recognize the materials used, my visual conceits become dysfunctional and read like a recipe for domestic horror and an unfathomable meeting. In doing so, I am encouraging the viewer to think about the world we live in and the physicality of materials that surround us through my reflective fragments.
My practice is heavily grounded in the process of making through an excess of layering, deconstructing and combining shop bought materials in an alchemic manner. These material combinations offer an abstract reflection of high street shops and the excess of products that surround us in our everyday life. By activating consumerism within my work and aestheticizing consumer goods, I aim to open a dialogue between the viewer and the material world, addressing materiality as a constituent part of my art making.
