Paddles

Silver Gelatin Print

1.1: Having grown up on a farm, agricultural life is an intrinsic part of my approach to the land. Throughout this past year, I have returned to the landscape of my adolescence, making images that speak, not of an unblemished landscape, but one that is worked, cultivated and bears the traces of those who live upon it. In these images, I wanted to evoke a conflict between freedom and isolation - its capacity for healing, as well as the dynamic of violence it inhabits.

1 of 13

Broom

Silver Gelatin Print

1.2: Within my work, motifs of agricultural rural life are evoked in pursuit of a question of identity. The notion of agriculture, in itself, seems to me to represent an exertion of control over an entity which is always necessarily changing - aways in flux. A life, then, spent at the mercy of the land, the weather and the ecosystem which comprises it, goes beyond ‘pathetic fallacy’ in my work. It was, rather, a fact of my upbringing and, as such, it is these same elements which coalesce, in my work, around ideas of trauma, sexual revelation and the formation of adolescent identity.

2 of 13

Fence

Silver Gelatin Print

3 of 13

Wasp Trap 1

Digital Image

2.1: In this series of 3D-modelled images, I looked at mechanisms of entrapment - specifically, wasp traps. Commonplace in farmhouse kitchens in late summer, these objects evoke a question of culpability. Understood from either perspective, the figures on either end of this system can be considered perpetrators or victims of violence

4 of 13

Wasp Trap 5

Digital Image

2.2: I have understood the figure of the wasp, that of a supposed pest species, in terms of my own queerness. Its treatment as a nuisance, as well as the effort towards containment, is represented in these traps, their very form alluding to the physiology of the wasp, as well as to erotic imagery.

5 of 13

Funnel Trap

Digital Image

2.3: These works are not presented in physical form, but rather as designs. I am interested in objects which pre-empt creation, delivering an emphasis on the conception of an object or system, tying the work more closely to the hand of its author. In this instance, the conception of the work - the effort to bring it into being - is a reflection of the artistic impulse to define and conclude upon an entity.

6 of 13

Buck

Video (Still)

3.1: Beginning with a script, this work tracks the becoming of a theatre play through documentation of its rehearsal. The story follows that of a horseman who is killed in battle, and whose saddle comes to life in order to exact revenge for its ill-treatment.

7 of 13

Buck

Excerpt from Script

3.2: The narrative is based on the Japanese myth of Tsukumogami, or “tools-spectres”. Within these tales, functional, inanimate objects inherit spiritual agency following maltreatment by their owners. Following their freedom, however, the spectres begin to enact their own malevolence, undoing our sympathy for them. This same trope of magical-becoming is prevalent in western culture in examples such as Charles Perrault’s “Peau d’Âne” and Aardman’s “Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers”.

8 of 13

Buck

Video (Still)

3.3: In bringing consciousness and animacy to the inert saddle, I wanted to tie its functionality to an idea of imprisonment. While the saddle is not the victim nor the perpetrator of entrapment (each role, in turn, embodied by the characters of the Rider and the Horse), it represents the tool, and, therefore, an ambiguous position in this dynamic of culpability.

9 of 13

Buck

Video (Still)

10 of 13

Buck

Excerpt from Script

11 of 13

Buck

Video (Still)

3.4: Working with performers, roles are not assigned to particular actors. Instead, various figures act out scenes repeatedly with changing roles, the video cut so as to fragment the narrative of the play. The conflict of the play loops back on itself endlessly, denying the viewer of the resolution that theatre normally would bring.

12 of 13

Ropewalk

Performance (Documentation)

4: In this collaboration with Rosie Trevill, made for the exhibition ‘Hopelessly Devoted’ (The Garment Factory, June 2019), we presented a performance work, utilising a script written between the two of us. The performance passes through a series of movements as we operate a handmade rope-making machine, reciting our text as we do so. The rope that we produced during the performance, as well as the words that we spoke, reflect a dichotomy between something that bonds and something that binds.

13 of 13

Initiating my work through processes of photography and writing, my practice seeks to develop research material which approaches exchanges of violence, ranging from the extreme to the vernacular, examining instances, systems and objects that deal with ideas of victimhood, entrapment, and erotic revelation. Often intuitively made, these objects are, then, implemented through performance and installation.

Scripts, blueprints, drawings and diagrams – documents which pre-empt or prelude a creation – form the starting point of my work, with the outlined events or items explored through a series of re-enactment procedures: re-creation, re-performance, and re-telling are employed as a means of comprehension and a movement towards inhabitance. Sculptural forms are developed in relationship to tools and instruments, affecting contemplation on their functionality. Equally, photographic media is employed in terms of surfaces or backdrops, emphasising the sense of theatricality and re-enactment inherent to the work, their content pursuing a restless environment in which elements of the land, specifically that of rural agricultural land, hint at a quiet violence.