about

When i am asked what sort of art I make, my answer is usually some version of this:

I studied sculpture at art school, but I don’t always make sculptures. Actually, I’m very conscious about putting unnecessary objects into the world so I try not to do that too much.

The core principles of sculpture (I think) are space, mass, gravity and materials. I think I am someone who is very concerned with sculptural ideas, and I do think that sculpture isn’t a way of making, it’s a way of thinking. 

I am deeply invested in space, mass, gravity and materials, but I do not respond to these ideas in a literal way. My work is annoyingly folded up and tucked away behind many metaphors, but the main thing you’ve got to know is that I’m very interested in the movements and the materials of Earth.

I took Geology at school for a year just after my mum died, I was 16-17, and I was suffering, I was in so much pain, but the rocks and fossils and the quiet afternoon classroom were extremely soothing to me.

I am always trying to find ways in which Earth changes and human changes are linked; rocks move like human responses to catastrophic life events, or gradual realisations, or normal, small, run-of-the-mill everyday thoughts. 

Emotions are about change – the word ‘motion’ is literally in there. Geomorphology also has a word for change in it. Both these sets of changes happen at different speeds, and have different weights, textures, colours, sizes and locations. I like to personify the materials of earth and think about them as having their own feelings, their own shit going on.

There’s a lot of other stuff that I’m interested in and that has an influence on my work – some of it is just stuff I like, and I do not care if that makes me sound like an amateur, that is fine because what is amateurism anyway, it’s love of the subject. A very admirable thing.

I’m very interested in the Dada movement – the purity of nonsense, random assemblage, dressing up and shouting, collecting and rearranging stuff from your life, being honest about the stuff you’re feeling. Very inspirational.

I love words, text, lettering. 

Text is a material; the Latin word texere (v) means ‘to weave, plait, or construct with elaborate care’. The root noun textus means a framework, structure or web. Writing is like a rock formation; material is scattered in layers, compressed, moved about, or erupts forth and stands there, refusing to move. Writing is world-building, just like rocks and mud.

I often ‘make now, think later’ and that’s a good way to work in my opinion. The best works come from following instinct, desire and intuition, but for me there also has to be a conversation along the way, between the conscious and the unconscious, to rationalise and contextualise.

I have written many ‘artist statements’ over the past decade, none of which I’ve been entirely happy with, and for a long while I gave up on having one altogether, or I said I don’t need one, or they’re pointless. But I felt the need to write down some thoughts about what it is I do, and why, so I think this will probably do.