Artist Statement

Technique & Process

Bamboo is my primary material, and I use a combination of cuts, splits, breakages, offcuts and connection techniques to create sculptural forms.

I use bamboo carpentry as a means of engaging with ideas of connection, breakdown, tension, strength, shadow, and rupture.

My work follows a process of iteration – creating, assembling, and revising forms.

These processes are both exploratory and conceptual, allowing meaning to emerge through both the making of objects and the ideas I have about making them.

Style

I use evidence of joinery, breakages, and assembly as part of my final aesthetic. I do this via visible connections, tool marks and using both whole bamboo poles in addition to offcuts. My pieces express a subtle internal structure that is expressed by how the work stands up.

My colour palette is native to various bamboo species, and light and shadow are also important elements.

Subject Matter & Vision

I create art as a means to counter an experience of the world which is increasingly flattened. 

I hope to find an expression of the world that is full of processes, nuance, complexity, and hidden structure. I do this by demonstrating both the processes involved and the final results.

My works are essentially case studies of what might interrupt the flattening processes inherent in our digital lives.

Recurring themes are inside/ outside; shadow, tension, balance, breakage, hidden inner structure, joinery, exploring processes that can be employed to create structure

Philosophical Underpinning

A pervasive underlying assumption of modernism is that any meaning and purpose does not exist, but is instead constructed and projected by the human mind. “But the achievements of human autonomy has been paid for by the experience of human alienation” (Richard Tarnas).

My art therefore is therefore a rejection of the void-ness at the centre of many lives.

In the situation in which we find ourselves (called ‘hypermodernism’ by art critic John David Ebert) “The artist becomes a kind of solitary myth-maker, forging new symbols through a lived truth.”  In other words, artists can show how real things – including psychological things – can be made, uncovered, shown implicitly perhaps, but undoubtedly there.

My work implies there are techniques and processes via which we can find hidden meanings or connections. And that these techniques have an underlying strength, resilience or organising capability. It suggests that there is a hidden structure there – something that is meaningful, if only we can find it.

It implies what that inner structure might be.

My work is concerned with experience in the world. Meaninglessness is part of a way of thinking about things – that what I think determines who I am. This product of modernism (including the online world) and suggests ‘you are outside looking in’. I want to posit an alternative – that there is an inside looking out. 

Engagement with Art/ Historical Canon

My work engages art traditions that explore how things are perceived and their relationship to meaning.

Relevant points of reference include:

• Anselm Kiefer – continues to explore signification systems

• Ebert – points out the point of contemporary art is to

• Joseph Beuys- described objects as tools for transformation — spiritual, psychological, and social.

• Andy Goldsworthy – ‘thank you for showing me what is there’.

• Carl Jung – Carl Jung followed the path of going inside to find previous hidden signification systems. his Red Book is a decade long exploration of interactions with dream analysis and automatic writing..

More broadly, the practice resonates with strands of Process Art, Post-Minimalism, and contemporary ecological art, which emphasise material behaviour and making as investigation. These references are contextual rather than imitative, positioning the work within ongoing conversations about materiality, structure, symbolism, and the role of making in contemporary art.

Following these traditions and artists, my work is not primarily concerned with what it looks like. While aesthetic qualities are important, the practice is driven by investigation into materials, structure, and  psychological suggestion.

The process is the message: making is a way of generating knowledge, experience, and meaning.

Different Series

Metanauts (2022–2023)
My Metanauts series consisted of printed or painted human figures embedded with smashed phones and dismantled hard drives. The works reflected a growing unease with digital culture: the figures seemed broken, hybrid, or wounded by technology. Many were later installed in abandoned urban locations, as if reintroducing a sense of spirit or presence.

Idols (2023–2024)
The Idols series consisted of digital interpretations of traditional African and Mesoamerican masks. I was attempting to find something significant and introduce it to the otherwise weightless space of digital imagery. I later also placed printouts of the Idols on abandoned or derelict walls, continuing my interest in inserting symbolic forms into forgotten environments.

Bamboo Maquettes (2024–2025)
The Bamboo Maquettes marked my transition into working physically with bamboo. In bamboo I sense a hidden power of expression. These small-scale pieces were structural experiments exploring how bamboo elements could be joined, balanced, and made to stand. The works also marked a shift toward thinking architecturally, considering connection, compression, and spatial form. This period allowed me to develop familiarity with the material, tools, and craft processes that would later underpin my bamboo sculptures.