My work explores the political and personal implications of governmental interventions in our lives. I am concerned with ideas of agency and information within democracy and that my values are not being represented by those elected to do so. I view drawing as a core tool in a political dismantling and unveiling of what is hidden from view; how the act of obfuscating the truth can itself be manipulated by the material processes my images are put through. Similarly, I see printmaking as an extension of my drawing practice, which offers a unique range of markmaking techniques to explore the idea of what is wrought within the work. My process is a constant labour of push-and-pull from the picture plane— what is forced up to the front, what is knocked back, and what interrupts the balance. In the end, the drawings become the act of mediation—a screen placed between the viewer and the subject that eventually dissolves into the picture. Often drawing from film, I am called towards questioning the nature of looking and bearing witness through quoting the language of cinema, the “machine that generates empathy”^1., the camera-as-weapon, and constructing compositions with both material and imagined collaborators, bringing the in-picture themes to critique the consistent mediation of a barbaric government in our daily lives.

^1. Quotation from Roger Ebert

The work represented in my degree show makes a feature of a drawing technique I have been working with to hint towards a rationalising matrix within/interrupting the imagery. Using different meshes: fabrics and synthetic nets, I brush charcoal powder through the matrix, leaving behind an impression of the gridded material. I have found this a fascinating way to explore evincing the inherent ‘creep’ referenced in my work. It has translated nicely into my print work, where it behaves like a mask, blocking ink from the thin grid, and, in turn, leaving a blind impression embossed on the paper; thus, becoming tactile.