Exploring issues about productivity, time, repetition and purpose, I examine how identity can dissolve in the artist’s work. Questioning the role of the artist and the process of ‘art making’, I allow unofficial activities to define the work, interrogating the value and importance of artefact within the context of the creator’s expectations surrounding it. Defined by materiality and gestures, exploration of human actions is seen as an extension of self, aiming to provide an intimate insight into the artist’s creative process.
Dissatisfied with personal artistic efforts, work examines how a practitioner could be restrained to the realm of craft. The ‘absence of artist’ is represented through creator’s quiet imprints, recording the repetition of an activity that is suggestive of emotional blockage. Plaster and concrete residues are not treated as by-products of ‘art making’, but as final pieces that solidify and monumentalize my interaction and relationship with the material. These capture traces of hand gestures scratching the container’s bottom and function as self-portraits, providing evidence of personal identity and expression. Through attacking and digging, my ‘fight’ with the material is solidified to a tangible object, which in turn becomes a container of repetitive and explorative actions.
Intertwining the psychological with the physical, the casing monumentalizes the recurrence of my actions and internal anxiety. Retaining marks of working, emotion and expression, these intimate pieces invite the viewer to get close enough to ‘read’ surfaces traced with evident human resonance. Artefact is used as an extension of the body, dealing with the link between myself and the physicality of the object. Fossils look at the passage of time being evocative of the artist’s concurrent presence and absence.