About Me

My photo
I would say i place more emphasis on how people react and engage with my work as opposed to a final finished piece. I like to use my work as a ‘catalyst for conversation’ setting up situations where people are faced with socialising and communicating. Whether that is a Tea Party, Gardening Club, or sewing workshop, i find appropriating social forms keeps your hands busy, relaxes your mind, keeps anxieties at bay, and naturally progresses towards conversation. The nature of my work activates the viewer, hopefully engaging them. Providing me with a participant to work alongside, and making us into a a collaborative team. The realisation of this means that i can never predict the outcome of the work, and also makes it very susceptible to change on an hourly basis due to the involvement of others. As a creator of these 'situations' it can be exhilarating, exhausting, nerve-wracking, and stressful, but the buzz and atmosphere created is a just reward for the roller-coaster of emotions each piece produces.

Body Drawing


“All art posits a space between the artist and the perceiver of the work, traditionally filled with the art object. In New genre Public art, that space is filled with the relationship between artist and audience…”
(Lacy.S, 1995: p35.)
Body Drawing made me realise that it is my audience that i want to engage with the most and i began this project with background reading of books such as Suzanne Lacy’s ‘Mapping the terrain: New genre public art.’ and Grant Kester’s ‘Conversation pieces: Community and communication in modern art.’.
At the heart of the project is experimentation as to how I could create a rapour and form a relationship with strangers from within my audience. This idea germinated into my piece ‘Body Drawing’, a piece that asked the audience to lay on pieces of paper and encourages them to approach others to help one another to draw around themselves.
Although slightly less successful than I had hoped ‘Body Drawing’ taught me that art that involves public interaction and involvement should be produced to have fun with and not to make people feel intimidated.
The problem with Body Drawing is that so many of us pick out physical flaws rather than celebrating the beauty of our bodies, therefore making people feel to intimidated and self-conscious to take part. I hope that with my change of tact to something that the audience should find fun and engaging as opposed to the physicality of our bodies it will increase the success of future work.
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