Artist Statement

My work is derived through the exploration of space, in discussion of identity, memory, history and placement. The work plays with reinterpreting narratives that play on metaphor, mythology, folklore and stories both fact and fiction. A cathartic way of working displays a time that once was, or never has been. I ask myself what is real and what is not while constructing a narrative through printmaking, sculpture and installation.

Surroundings, public and private spaces, form the basis of my investigation, particularly the urban and domestic. Works manifest through an intimate understanding of my upbringing and surroundings, in affinity to childhood memory and post-conflict Northern Irish identity. Inspired by what surrounds me, I adapt and create, manifesting works that ask questions on ‘belonging’ and ‘home’. Exposing a plethora of thought and emotion around identity, division and displacement. I explore the simplicity of shape and symbols to impart metaphor and narrative to delineate personal and private experience of urban spaces through time. I combine print and sculpture to form an intricate relationship on coextensive objects that make up spaces between states of being and becoming. Working to a scale that is both expansive and intimate, inviting a viewer in to question ownership and vulnerability. The work combines to create an environment that captures a moment in time, between past, present and future. Questioning emotional and physical memory through material, I aim to provide a central viewing point from which a viewer can gain their own perspective.

My work identifies and personifies thoughts, memories and emotion both constructed, fleeting, forced and repressed: a reinterpretation and revisualisation of pressing social and political issues such as segregation, barriers, identity and loss. I use my work as a means to tell a story, to superimpose difficult symbology within playful narrative.  Concepts of austerity, conflict and identity relate beyond my own experience and to a wider social and cultural context. My work is a response. I use my own experience as a means to retell, to break down barriers and indicate changing attitudes for hope.