| Concept of Examen: |
| My work is created through repetitive, time consuming methods of working; a fetishization of labor. I view such activities as a form of self-control. I am interested in this idea of the body – as biological whole, but also its instincts, desires and obsessions – being ‘disciplined’ by various techniques of control. These ideas are explored alongside my own personal struggle to control my work, and the ‘disorder’ I confront myself with. One aspect of my work attempts to control another; new work consumes old; a constant dismantling and reassembling of meaning and order. Through an exploration of how ‘meaning’ is injected into one’s life through personal rituals and rules, I consider how these beliefs and attitudes can be expressed through ‘style’, and what happens when the individual becomes ‘lost’ in a mess of bodily, and material, excesses. Ideas of consuming excess are explored in diverse forms, including black video tape appearing as a shiny, trashy black mass - a mess of useless information and out of date technology – images of muscles and bodies carved out of magazines, and thousands of sticking plasters forming into skin-like sheets. My installations frequently descend into a chaos which is both seductive and repulsive as the objects threaten to consume all: in one recent installation, a “fallen” Christmas star was tangled in the black mass of tape, whilst ‘bodies’ on a collaged shape with tattoos growing over them become more and more tattooed towards the bottom, darkness and chaos taking over. |
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