Biography
In my work I explore the visual and verbal material that surrounds us by reworking and re-examining the trappings of our commercial culture. My practice investigates the processes of communication and persuasion used on both domestic and international scales. I work across video, performance and sculpture.
I work with diverse source materials; government health warnings, disclaimer small print, hand-written signs, YouTube videos, brand mascots and shop fittings. I attempt to isolate and pick apart these items, which we often overlook, in order to probe how they function.
My work appropriates numerous visual languages, re-circulating their symbolic components to disrupt the logic of our assumptions. I reorganise familiar elements from multinational corporate advertising, to vernacular promotional material, via the icons of art history and the rhetoric and actions of those with power and influence. An interest in the mechanisms of consumerism and promotion has led me to work with materials, and in environments, directly linked to sales and marketing.
I am fascinated by the commodification of happiness and identity; how people attempt to define themselves through the things they purchase and believe. How they collude in their own manipulation by becoming devotees of product designers, advertising executives, spin doctors and charlatans.
