“Nature is on the inside. There is an inter-relationship between the body and the world. Patterns that appear in nature also appear in our bodies. There is an endless repetition of shapes and swirls, from the branches of a tree, to the vessels of the human circulatory system – the structures in the brain, the pores of the skin. I trace these structures with my needle and thread, puncturing the photographic surface. “
My work is primarily located within photography yet it combines embroidery and crochet to create works that produce a unique combination of high end digital technology and old world craft skills.
Photography is a medium that does not make evident the ‘artist’s hand’. My use of drawing and embroidery involves direct physical actions.
In 2007 I began printing photographic montages on materials such as Georgette or watercolour paper and more recently on archival cotton. I then embroider specific areas of the image plane with cotton or metallic threads disrupting what philosopher Roland Barthes referred to as the punctum of a photographic image.
I question the veracity of photography. It is intrinsically linked with memory and nostalgia. It is an unreliable medium in relation to ‘truth’. I draw attention to the fragile, slippery nature of memory itself. My photographs are often out of focus or manipulated. By using embroidery I open up a triangular dialogue between stitching (a form of drawing in the way I use it), the photograph and the viewer. I have a particular interest in the struggle between absence and presence existing in a photograph. My images are open-ended and have a similar tension between beauty and unease.
The strange marriage of materials emerges from my conceptual concerns. I have an interest in interior worlds and intimate spaces, memory, imagination, dreams and the unconscious. My work revels in secret worlds and private spaces. The subjects portrayed are caught in a moment of private reverie and are veiled by elements of the natural world. In a combination of portraiture and landscape photography, the familiar is transformed into a dreamlike tableau.
My new work is titled “Murmur”. It combines landscape with the figure to explore the concept of sense memory. These works are the most heavily embroidered to date with the metallic threads glittering and dancing across the surface of the photographic elements.