The Four Artworks on Display
Surveillance State of Mind
Oil on canvas, 2024, 80x160cm
London has the highest density of CCTV cameras in the world. In 2023, the UK government imposed restrictions on protest which include limitations on privacy and, in 2024, they awarded a lucrative NHS contract to a company without proper privacy controls. This painting is a response to these issues and continues my interest in surfacing hidden agendas and scratching the surface of appearances. The artwork is about seeing, being seen, watching and being watched...the surveillance state of mind of both viewer and viewed.
Eyedeology
Oil paint, egg shells, wire, books, 2024, 40x40x50cm.
Six handpainted eye-eggs are caged and locked in a golden sack atop a pile of art history and art theory books. Culture is the manifestation of ideas held by a society, wether those ideas are conscious or not, scrutinised or not. The unconscious, unscrutinised ideas are the dangerous ones that lock us in place despite the need for change.
Homemade Notions
Twigs, sewing notions etcetera, oil paint and egg shells, 2024, 50x50x70cm.
It occurred to me that we are all homemade and thus embodying the capacities of those who made us. A nest of twigs and sewing notions - those items in sewing that hold together the fabric analogous to the notions with which we build a mind, in which we nurture our identity. The mind/nest made for us in childhood...carried forward into adulthood.
Drawings from the Plane of Immanence
(various) Pencil & paper, 2024, 70x300cm.
Various drawings made in response to the concept of the 'Plane of Immanence' by the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. Immanence, or becoming, is an infitine field of substance...a formless, univocal, self-organizing process always qualitatively differentiating from itself. On the plane are complex networks of forces, particles, connections, relations, affects and becomings: "There are only relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements,...molecules, and particles of all kinds."
The drawings are the moment of becoming, unbecoming and re-becoming.