Joondalup Invitation Art Award 2017
The title of my current series of work – Sacred animate – takes inspiration from an ecological form of animism that describes a dynamic exchange between humans and nature. Sustained by ongoing field research, this series insistently speaks to a sense of place. In the creation of new work for Joondalup CIAA, I have found inspiration in the remaining bushland around Warwick where I spent my childhood. Here I have photographed natural patterns, strange plant forms, fungi and delicate orchids and have collected small findings that are studied like precious objects.
Processes of growth and decay provide a primary point of focus in the Sacred animate series, as ecological cycles become metaphors for personal transformation. Interweaving imagery from the natural environment with a process-driven ‘stream of consciousness’ technique, my drawings and assemblages explore the forms that lurk beneath the conscious mind. Suppressed desires and fears emerge as eerie dreamscapes, like mental maps to an uncanny and erotic terrain. Enjoying an interplay between the real and imagined, these works are intended to be at once alluring and disarming.
Processes of growth and decay provide a primary point of focus in the Sacred animate series, as ecological cycles become metaphors for personal transformation. Interweaving imagery from the natural environment with a process-driven ‘stream of consciousness’ technique, my drawings and assemblages explore the forms that lurk beneath the conscious mind. Suppressed desires and fears emerge as eerie dreamscapes, like mental maps to an uncanny and erotic terrain. Enjoying an interplay between the real and imagined, these works are intended to be at once alluring and disarming.