MY PRACTICE
Photograph by Joao Barrros
As a social artist I have adopted a multi-media practice, established through participatory live-art actions, interactive installations and drawing.
I create work that relies on public engagement and participation within our shared social spaces that invite us to see things differently. I am interested in our global and personal diversities and how our experience and perceptions of the world and community around us shape our lives and the actions we make within them.
Both historical traditions and contemporary culture inflict ideas and external influences to the way in which we perceive. I work to challenge and question these perceptions to ignite and stimulate our imaginations. My work habitually responds to site, social circumstance and cultural interaction relating to community, historical context and future possibilities.
Working in such a way develops a need for extending my practice through community engagement and activities through workshops and other interactive processes. Planning and delivering workshops alongside my personal practice provides insightful opportunities to discover the relationship between people and place. This generates shared learning and exchange between myself and the participants.
My live-art actions aim principally to create and activate spaces that stimulate interactions between myself, participants and passersby. This element of my work hopes to encourage the sharing and challenging of personal thoughts and opinions between us.
My approach to drawing and painting brings a visual form to thoughts, conversations and interactions. The silent, visual communication is a contemplative expression to aid a deeper understanding to social encounters for both myself and hopefully the viewer. These too aim to reflect upon the natural desire for human communication.