Artist statement
My work is concerned with the visceral and the sensual. It draws upon anatomical drawing and botanical illustration, but occupies a liminal territory between scientific enquiry and the subjective, imaginary body.
My recent work investigates the relationship between innocence, consumption and desire. In each piece, a sculpted animal is cut, manipulated and refigured. These interventions result in outbursts of colour and texture, twisting the material or "flesh" of the sculpture into forms resembling flowers or fruit. The object assumes a two-fold meaning; a split or double identity. From one angle the viewer sees a bouquet of roses, from another the head of a slaughtered calf.
These interventions can be read as the expression of an impulse to "dress" or prettify, or as the breaking through or breaking out of an irrational, subconscious or chaotic element, like a wound or disease. My treatment of my subject, whether viewed as butchery or beautification, creates an undercurrent of disturbance in the work.
Drawing on the traditions of vanitas and still life, my work explores the contradiction inherent in the "nature morte", in which transient everyday objects - bread, meat, flowers, fruit - are immortalised and elevated by the processes of art. Petals on the point of turning brown and dropping, fruit so ripe that it is just on the verge of rotting; captured and petrified, like a stuffed animal or a frozen bouquet. Art as a kind of pickling, s howing death and obscuring it - all at once. Using materials manipulated to resemble food- meat and marzipan, sugar and butter, offal and chocolate - the work explores ideas around pleasure and consumption, both visual and oral.
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Qualifications and training
- 2000 MA Fine Art (Sculpture), Royal College of Art, London
- 1998 BA (Hons) Fine Art (Sculpture), Chelsea College of Art and Design, London
Solo exhibitions
- 2010 Fantasia, Kudlek van Der Grinten Galerie, Cologne
- 2008 Tempting Nature, Mogadishni, Copenhagen (more info)
- 2007 Innocents, Mogadishni, Copenhagen
- 2005 Carniflora, Mogadishni, Copenhagen
- 2001 Exquisite Corpse, DomoBaal Contemporary Art, London
Group exhibitions
- 2012 Highly Sensitive:Wax in Contemporary Art, Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, Germany
- 2012 Metamorphosis:The Transformation of Being, One Marylebone, London
- 2012 East Wing X:Material Matters, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
- 2011 Iconoclasts, Lloyds Club, London
- 2011 Wunderkammer, Octagon Chapel, Bath
- 2011 Direction, Gallery B15, Copenhagen
- 2010 Hangart ed. 16: The Secret of England's Greatness, Hangar 7, Salzburg, Austria
- 2010 Lebenslust und Totentanz, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria
- 2010 Stories, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton (more info)
- 2010 Podium and Pandemonium, Nettie Horn, London
- 2009 Gods and Mortals, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London
- 2009 Old Masters Re-interpreted, Rollo Contemporary Art, London
- 2009 Moments of Macabre, Bo Lee Gallery, Bath
- 2008 Future50, Project Space Leeds, Leeds (more info)
- 2008 Whispers of Immortality, Natalia Goldin Gallery, Stockholm
- 2008 These Living Walls of Jet, Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool (more info)
- 2008 Group Show, Mogadishni, Copenhagen
- 2008 The Clearing, Nettie Horn, London
- 2007 Absolute Summer 07, Mogadishni AAR, Aarhus, Denmark
- 2006 Artsway Open, Artsway, UK
- 2006 Go Figure, Mogadishni, Aarhus
- 2006 Everything Must Go, VTO Gallery, London
- 2004 Paradisiaco, DomoBaal Contemporary Art, London
- 2004 Cardboard Factory, Mogadishni, Copenhagen
- 2004 Group Show, Mogadishni, Copenhagen
- 2003 Entranced, VTO Gallery, London
- 2003 Don't you forget about me, Studio Voltaire, London
- 2003 Open Sculpture, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
- 2002 Arcadia in the City, Marble Hill House, Twickenham
- 2002 Beautiful Projects, Ashley Gardens, London
- 2002 New Classicism, Palazzo Forti, Verona
- 2001 What next from London?, Orion Gallery, Ostend
- 2001 Bittersweet, Danielle Arnaud, London
- 2000 Assembly, Stepney City, London
Other
- 2012 Slick Art Fair, Le Garage, Paris
- 2011 Slick Art Fair, Le Garage, Paris
- 2010 Art Cologne, Cologne, Germany
- 2009 Art Brussels, Brussels Expo, Brussels (more info)
- 2008 Art Copenhagen, Forum, Copenhagen
- 2008 Art Brussels, Brussels Expo, Brussels
- 2007 Zoo Art Fair, Royal Academy of Arts, London (more info)
- 2005 Liste, Basel, Switzerland
- 2005 The Armory Show, New York, US
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