Are there particular emotions or responses you hope to evoke in viewers of your work?
With all my work I’m trying to give the viewer’s body something to map onto, to reflect back a feeling it knows, a memory of a sensation. I’m fascinated by two of our lesser thought of senses: our sense of interoception - the sense of our internal processes, mechanics and systems inside our bodies - and proprioception - the awareness of our alignment, position or movement through space. With each work I’m aiming to convey something of these inner senses.
A framework for this which I am always coming back to is the neurological condition of mirror-touch synaesthesia. It’s this rare synaesthesia where a sensation of physical touch is felt in response to what is seen, most commonly when observing physical touch to another person. However, a small minority of these synaesthetes experience a bodily empathy with inanimate objects – they might feel as though their body has taken up the form of a bulbous glass or elongated like a lamppost, or the indentations of a particular texture will feel impressed upon their skin – their sense of their body is pulled out of shape. It was researching this synaesthesia which pushed my work from painting into sculpture back in 2018. It’s been in the back of my mind in the studio since, thinking of my sculptures as a kind of sensory surrogate for an embodied way of seeing.
Sculpture can be such a bodily medium with its physical presence in the world and the techniques I bring together hone in on that. The internal skeletal structures I draw up in CAD software to then be cut into wooden board which I then fit together and carve by hand. Then I stretch different layers of fabric over these bones and whatever colour or texture the finished work has there’s an undeniable skin-like feel to something that is formed in this way. You can feel the tension of the fabric at the tips and the irregular undulations which form through the upholstery has its own organicism. My sculptures are often hollow in the way that I am forming the structures now and I find that volume is palpable to the viewer. While I’m rarely obliquely referencing a human body in the work, these techniques lend themselves to projecting a sensation and grappling with abstract understandings of the systems of the body: what it means to digest or to inhale and expel breath.
Are there specific artists, movements, or cultural influences that inspire your work?
My work is rooted between the histories of soft-sculpture, minimalism and aesthetics of Space Age design. So both art and design from the 60s is hugely influential to me. I love Eva Hesse, Claes Oldenburg, Marta Pan - especially her sculptures which were used as props for Ballet performances - Lee Bontecou, Kim Lim, Barbara Hepworth, Elizabeth Murray, Louise Bourgeois, it was such an exciting time for minimal organicism.
I’m interested in those parts of our bodies and the world we still know almost nothing about. It’s that potential in the unknown that lends itself towards sci-fi and Space Age design. Space Age design has such an appeal to me in the way that it was design not just for the body, but of the body. I’m so envious of that eras optimism for the future. Verner Panton, Pierre Cardin, the Viennese collective Haus Rucker-Co, and Joe Columbo are some of my favourites. There’s so many contemporary artists and designers i’m endlessly inspired, Anicka Yi, Margueritte Humeau, Ron Nagle, Haegue Yang, Rebecca Horn, Diane Simpson, Nairy Baghramian, Piere Cardin, Hussein Chalayan, Hiroyuki Hamada just to name a few.
Can you discuss a particular piece featured in the exhibition and the story or concept behind it?
This pair of sculptures came out of a research project where I was looking at how organisms grow and evolve as they are pulled by changing gravitational and electromagnetic forces. I produced a whole range of radial and vortex-like works where I was intending to simulate a kind of ‘biological quivering’: a fluidity that we can feel in our inner processes and see in the world.
Ghost of Itself is an installation of two freestanding sculptures which spiral outwards in opposite directions. They are similar but not mirror images. In both, one wave radiates outward from a coiled centre, with each spine reaching different limit points. These irregular rotations generate undulating forms which ripple in multiple directions. A nodal pushes up, distorting the tight membrane of each section and plots unwinding swirls through the segments.
The work takes its inspiration from the deep ocean, the abyss where until relatively recently it was thought that no life forms existed. In reality, it is full of life which has evolved to withstand extreme conditions. The organisms in these depths have even developed the ability to glow in the dark since there is no other light. When approached by a predator some of these creatures will shed off the outer layer of their skin leaving behind an illuminated ghostly replica of themselves in the hope that in the confusion they can escape.
Has the space and the industrial history of Palmer Gallery influenced the way you have presented or conceptualized your work? If so, how?
I was excited to show here too because my family are originally from this area of London, just round the corner in Hendon, and my grandparents met while working in a factory making aircraft parts for WW2 here - potentially this exact one. While this work existed before this show came about, I think it’s interesting to think about the sense of propulsion which spirals out of each of these pieces in the context of the space’s history making propellors.
How do you see your work evolving in the future, both stylistically and thematically?
I’m working to develop more wearable and adaptable sculptures and I’d love to collaborate with dancers who could inhabit them.
