Primarily my work is about connections with people, places and objects. I collect ephemera, word games, discarded haberdashery and ironmongery, which act as a source and feed for potential work and ideas.

Within the work there is an importance in retaining sensitivity to materials and a respect for objects that other people have crafted, used or cherished and I express ideas through combining and reworking the familiar everyday objects which surround us.

Often the work raises emotions like conflict and uncertainty which are explored by actively engaging with the selection of particular materials, then manipulated to a form which expresses the desired emotional state. This is sometimes tranquil and other worldly or grounded in familiar (often achieved by using domestic objects) the combination of which provides a security of known sensory history.

My proposal is to develop and realise a piece of work, started a few years ago, which is in a state of limbo. The objects are an unopened 1960s Dubarry bath set comprising of talcum powder and bath cubes and a child’s battered wooden ironing board. Both items have strong familial links.

I started research into the Nordic tradition of burial and planned to make a boat from the ironing board and turn the sea into a big bath, using the bath cubes and talc in the ceremony. Turner, poesy, fire, water, air, love, life, death – all swimming in turmoil. The scale of the boat seemed to limit things and close it down.

AA2A offers the opportunity of using the workshop to construct a worthy and noble vessel and explore the possibilities of discovering methods outside of my usual practice to record the process, exploiting the filmic qualities and committing it to the pages of a sensory book.

'I am... You are...'
installation, printed words