Biography
Since 2010, I have been visiting areas that have been transformed by industry. I have created work based around the landscapes of dockyards and shipping ports in Britain, America and Italy. In 2016/17, I was awarded a 6-month residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai which is situated in an area of rampant commercial, industrial and residential development. Whilst there, I became very interested in how we, as humans, adapt and connect within an environment under constant construction, perpetual mutation and rapid change. I began to to experiment with interweaving shapes, symbols and abstracted forms gathered from crowds, temples, development sites, gaming centers, digital billboards, rubbish tips, dumping grounds, street stalls and fancy malls; attempting to capture the tempo, rhythm and potential for alienation in an unknown city.
I use various techniques such as etching, aquatint, spit bite, lithography, mono-print, relief and screen-print which all combine to provide endless scope for experimentation and development.
Working with materials like steel, zinc, stone and wood seem to fit the industrial subjects that my work often focuses on. Printmaking provides a language of marks, a richness, a depth of colour, texture and other unique characteristics that cannot be achieved through other mediums. The experimentation and the interplay between control and chance within the creative process is important to my practice as I find the predictability of print is expanded and complemented by moments of play and spontaneity.
