How do you describe your own art practice?
I explore our relationship with our own bodies and the spaces that we inhabit. It’s a complicated relationship that is influenced by our cultural and physical environments. It seems to me that we are becoming increasingly disconnected from our own bodies, so I try to allow people to look at the human form in a different way, freed from the usual judgements that we make when looking at a nude. A key aspect of the work is that the bodies are not altered with Photoshop. I plan these unsettling poses that look almost surreal to try to turn what should be intimately familiar into an unfamiliar sculpture.
What was your first experience with art?
I was always drawing and making things as a child, as I imagine most children do. But I really loved building homes. I built dens in every room of the house as well as the garden. I made miniature houses with all their contents out of cardboard and whatever else I could find at home. There was something about creating a contained and personal environment that captivated me. Maybe that’s not strictly art, but it was an act of creativity.
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
The human body itself. Studying its shapes and thinking about how it can move and bend and compress.
What do you need in order to create your work?
Willing bodies, diffused natural light, and slightly odd spaces – especially good if they are a little bit unnerving. And of course a camera and some ideas of strange shapes.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m photographing contorted groups of people and couples, looking at how the bent forms can interact with each other and the relationships between them.
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
Jonny Briggs’ piece, ‘Order, ordered, disorder, 2016’. The teeth in the work really got me, she looks so strained. Jonny’s work is always unexpected and fascinating.
