Death is a sign of life.
Miniature model making and drawing provide a stage for the exploration of mortal existence, where the fine line separating youth and age, birth and death highlights our vulnerable condition as human beings. The art functions on a level of seduction that invites the viewer to enter a diminutive world that speaks about the universal mortal condition.
The intimate juxtaposition of birth and mortality resides in familiar miniature objects; sentimental in relation to childbirth and juvenile times or with reference to debilitating age, illness, disease and death. They speak about our irreversible, inevitable journey from ‘the cradle to the grave’ and provide a platform for the projection of ones own authentic experience of true life. These objects nourish lived experience and are inseparable from the thoughts, feelings and associations anchored by them.
Death is a sign of life. The symbology of life sits beside the symbology of death. We cannot escape, control or deny our mortality; it is our final appointment we will attend in life. And yet for most, it remains an unacceptable idea; images of death are unpalatable, uncontrollable, painful and often irrational. Social ethics, beliefs and attitudes towards death in the western post-modern world are catalysts for my obsession with collective mortality. From the inanimate object to the bloody vessel, the ‘grotesque’ is exquisitely drawn and the ‘undesirable’ is crafted in miniature. Small scale monochrome drawings illustrate detailed views of the dissected human body, drawn from a photographic atlas of practical anatomy. The reduction in scale and absence of bloody hues has made what were inescapably graphic and explicit photographs somewhat more palatable, and even beautiful. Such miniature representation elevates the subject to an art object, away from familiar brutal iconography of death. These works probe our collective response to viewing images death with the physical and psychological nature of mortality being the pivotal theme.
Confronting the reality of childbirth is central to most recent works. Small pencil drawings fixate on what Julia Kristeva considers the abject maternal body: “...desirable and terrifying, nourishing and murderous...” The blood and afterbirth which emerge from the maternal body are visible signs of the connection between inside and outside, self and other, thus “what disturbs identity, system, order...does not respect borders positions, rules.” The physiological processes which occur during transition from the womb to world are both sudden and dramatic; the potential for life to be terminated before its first breath. Miniature models of familiar objects associated with parturition communicate these tender visions of the physical and psychological conditions of childbirth.
‘Disease’ and ‘illness’, by contemporary definition, are concepts explored by miniature medical equipment including wheelchairs, beds, operating tables, gynaecology and labour tables, which aspire to illuminate the subjective experience of illness that is difficult for most humans to comprehend.
The intimate juxtaposition of birth and mortality resides in familiar miniature objects; sentimental in relation to childbirth and juvenile times or with reference to debilitating age, illness, disease and death. They speak about our irreversible, inevitable journey from ‘the cradle to the grave’ and provide a platform for the projection of ones own authentic experience of true life. These objects nourish lived experience and are inseparable from the thoughts, feelings and associations anchored by them.
Death is a sign of life. The symbology of life sits beside the symbology of death. We cannot escape, control or deny our mortality; it is our final appointment we will attend in life. And yet for most, it remains an unacceptable idea; images of death are unpalatable, uncontrollable, painful and often irrational. Social ethics, beliefs and attitudes towards death in the western post-modern world are catalysts for my obsession with collective mortality. From the inanimate object to the bloody vessel, the ‘grotesque’ is exquisitely drawn and the ‘undesirable’ is crafted in miniature. Small scale monochrome drawings illustrate detailed views of the dissected human body, drawn from a photographic atlas of practical anatomy. The reduction in scale and absence of bloody hues has made what were inescapably graphic and explicit photographs somewhat more palatable, and even beautiful. Such miniature representation elevates the subject to an art object, away from familiar brutal iconography of death. These works probe our collective response to viewing images death with the physical and psychological nature of mortality being the pivotal theme.
Confronting the reality of childbirth is central to most recent works. Small pencil drawings fixate on what Julia Kristeva considers the abject maternal body: “...desirable and terrifying, nourishing and murderous...” The blood and afterbirth which emerge from the maternal body are visible signs of the connection between inside and outside, self and other, thus “what disturbs identity, system, order...does not respect borders positions, rules.” The physiological processes which occur during transition from the womb to world are both sudden and dramatic; the potential for life to be terminated before its first breath. Miniature models of familiar objects associated with parturition communicate these tender visions of the physical and psychological conditions of childbirth.
‘Disease’ and ‘illness’, by contemporary definition, are concepts explored by miniature medical equipment including wheelchairs, beds, operating tables, gynaecology and labour tables, which aspire to illuminate the subjective experience of illness that is difficult for most humans to comprehend.