portfolio and statement

The starting point for my current project was the word 'Broken' which I am interpreting through the story of Medusa. I am developing a body of work that explores different aspects of her story such as misogyny, victim blaming and body dysmorphia. For my 'Medusa's Head' sculpture I used wax and candles to sculpt her head, which I impaled onto a metal spike. Embedded into the wax are wicks that I am going to light so that Medusa's head melts. I have taken inspation from a wax candle sculpture of a sleeping woman by Belgian fashion firm A.F Vandevorst which doubles as an unsettling candle which you would watch melt away as the runway went on. I also looked at Urs Fischer, a mixed media artist who created an installation at the 2011 Venice Biennale entirely made out of candles that were perceived as normal scuptures. They were lit on fire to show the transformation of time, metamorphosis, and creative destruction of his work. I like the idea that not everything you create is meant to last forever. In my sculpture Medusa looks into cracked mirror to reflect issues of internalised misogyny and dysmorphia as a result of being cursed by Athena. I feel that this story resonates with women today in the way they are victimised and the way internalised misogyny affects the relationships between women. Louise Bourgeois has influenced me in the sculptural aspect of her work as well as her themes of motherhood and self-acceptance.

With my sculpture 'Healing' I wanted to create a small but dangerous piece that represented the idea of self healing while everything around you is not fixable, and that after trauma, even when you try to focus on your own self-healing, the world around you is breaking apart at the seams. This was inspired by Medusa's trauma after being raped by Poseidon and the artist Claire Curneen who creates delicate porcelain sculptures which explore themes of death and rebirth. This links to my reimagining of Medusa's story in which she is driven to killing herself as opposed to her being killed by Perseus - a man. My aim is to create a video piece of both wax sculptures melting.

My interest in video art has developed in the past year after looking at female video artist's such as Janine Antoni's 'Loving Care' and Abramovich’s 'Rhythm 0' starting from my 'Human paintbrush' video performance, exploring narrative in 'Don't let the bedbugs bite' and my installation piece 'Join us' created for FMP. 'Join us' explored stereotypes and real life cults based around themes of virginity and sacrifice’s shown in movies, books and actual events.

Whilst video art is important to my practice, sculpting, painting and printmaking is at the core of all the videos I have made and I use video to expand on my traditional pieces of work to bring my concepts to life. my goal is to expand in learning more techniques for print making and painting and sculpture to help further my practice’s