My practice explores how my personal/family history intersects with mythologies of the areas that I live in. The Southmead Rag and Bone Man, his chant winds through my work, in and out of the houses and my consciousness. Where too much stuff is seen as a horror in the home, it is a thing of beauty and prosper for a scrap collector. The kind of care that women in the home have exhibited for generations; collecting, recycling and repurposing have always been a part of women’s culture. Fabric can be folded, manipulated and used to conceal, it can act as a carrier bag for dirt, smells and memories. The installation of my work has become a pivotal part of my creative process; the form and parameters of my work remain unfixed, allowing them to be dictated by the space that they occupy.
Domestic sculpture combines abandoned drying rack, duvet-cover repurposed as a dust sheet. The matching pillowcases, separated from the cover, used as makeshift bags to steal from my Dad's flat (1996). Starching gives form/structure, reaffirming the dirt/smell/memories held in the fabric.
This sculpture is found/made, somewhere between the destruction of a worn advertisement and the construction of a pillowcase, allowing the paper to be transformed and shaped into a fabric that folds, distorts and conceals the markers of its past life.
This sculpture is found/made, somewhere between the destruction of a worn advertisement and the construction of a pillowcase, allowing the paper to be transformed and shaped into a fabric that folds, distorts and conceals the markers of its past life.
Sculpture made from wax, fitted sheet, drying rack
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 86cm x 69cm
Oil on canvas, 29.7 cm x 42 cm
