Briefly, describe your art practice? Drawing, painting and sculpture as a material interrogation of the body: an insatiably desiring and viscerally maniacal machine. An intimate examination of the emergence of subjectivity brought about by transfigurative encounters with other forms and forces. Life as a series of visceral exchanges activated in, on and through the flesh.
What inspires you to make art work? There’s not one thing… the symbolic offering of something maybe… it feels like being an artist is a constant offering. The possibilities of engaging with life, forms, forces, things, myself, my body, the wider world, in new ways. The handling of materials a process of perpetual recycling and renewal, full of surprises, and a good reminder that there’s never an end to a thing, you never know anything and likely never will know much, can never fully control a thing or a process. Making art feels celebratory, even when circumstances - internal and external - are shitty. It feels celebratory as a form of resistance, a silent resistance to the madness of contemporary life - the constant chattering of constant bullshit. It’s a form of language which has the capacity to offer new ways of being in the world, with things, with ourselves, our bodies and others, even if just for a moment, that’s why I think it’s celebratory, it affirms life…not humans…life. Art works take us outside of ourselves, sever us from our egos for a time, remind us other things are bursting with life force; that our petty, human minds are of little significance. I suppose that’s what drives me, that’s what drives the work.
Explain the basis of your art project for The Bonkers Contemporary Show My practice is rooted in notions of encounter and the limitless potentialities of the body as a site of violently joyful, life affirming actualisation. Recently, I’ve become interested in the state of our collective, social body; experience is becoming increasingly digitised, bodies increasingly isolated, language and aesthetics increasingly standardised. I’m interested in how processes of subjectivization are shifting and how life that is at odds with the natural rhythms of flesh affects us organically, behaviorally, emotionally, and intellectually.
Driven by these conceptual and ethical concerns, the works for Bonkers will seek to interrogate the current crisis of our social and individual bodies, acknowledge the magic of visceral experience and celebrate the flesh as a sight of ineffable, unarguable truth.
Who are your role models artistically? Eva Hesse Louise Bourgeois Sarah Lucas John Currin George Condo
What do you think is your most AMAZING achievement in art today? Probably continuing to carry on with it every day.
Describe your art in 5 words. Vivacious Optimistic Hedonistic Sincere Resolute