Biography
The nucleus of my practice is an engagement with the activity of making and its relationship to play. These explorations or at least methods of making and approach are all still deliberately driven by an interest in all things military but this supposition is probably driven by a childhood obsession with war and the architecture and machinery of war. The work specifically is looking at toys and play, and hiding places, and play and military architecture (bunkers) and play. The battlefields are not concerned with the reality of warfare so much as the fantasy and ‘cinema’ of warfare. The battlefields are those of the suburban garden and bedroom floor. There has been some movement away from this original manifestation and I am now looking at ‘small voices’ and language. The ‘small voices’ are still very much concerned with hiding places and a domestic landscape but have something to do with impotence, diffidence or inaction (I think this is a direct psychological reflection of my experiences and ‘awakenings ‘since becoming a father). The move toward the use of words isn’t significantly obtuse in that I am looking at the way language, and more specifically words are played with or manipulated in some advertising. Again games and playing are present but also some slight irritation in the abuse of the rules and the liberties taken with the game. The products are insignificant and worthless but are afforded great pretension and there are obvious connections between fiction, propaganda and advertising…. hyperreality.
