Personal Statement
“The relationship that we have with textiles, starting in childhood with swaddling and continuing throughout our lives until our journey ends with death and the shroud, has influenced my work from the beginning. Following the death of my sister, it was as if her clothes still contained her, the well-worn material had a bagginess about it, knees and elbows distorted to the shape of her form. A need to prolong this memory of her led to experimenting with bio-resin and then porcelain, manipulating the slip-cast method. However, a lace detail had a certain tweeness about it that didn't reflect the sorrow I felt, and so a disturbing element was introduced, adding bio-resin in cracks and splits to suggest bleeding - as if the ceramic were alive and had been cut.
This unsettling aesthetic and the family inclusion extends further when using feathers from my brother's domestic birds. By combining the lace detail and the feathers in my work, it is as if I wish to contain the sibling unit for longer by transferring elements to a more permanent object. The pieces may not function in the traditional sense, they do not need to, but for me the aura they create and the story they represent is enough.”