EVERYDAY OBJECTS, 2023

My work is inspired by reinvention — of ourselves, objects and the planet.

I’m inspired by the bricoleur, working with the objects at hand to create something novel; by the Futurists with their nonconforming artistic traditions and, more recently, the Arte Povera movement and the use of everyday objects shown in a different way to convey new meaning.

My starting point is the industrial age, and the marvelous invention of plastic. This seemingly magical material offered new possibilities and, together with the energy supplied by fossil fuels, powered the economic development of the twentieth century.

And yet we now pay the price for our dependence on the vast industrial-energy complex, in the form of environmental degradation and global warming. I choose to work in a medium that encapsulates this terrible bargain – plastic.

Using a heat gun to reinvent my plastic bottles and bottle tops, the original form is distorted yet recognisable, repurposed for a new narrative.

The frames are hand-made and painted with a non-toxic chalk paint. The titles (Contact, Wake Up, Doom, Vanish) are familiar due to the association with the commercial product, a play on the names made so familiar by their relentless marketing. The colour palette is similarly derived from the commercial origins of the material, stripped down and simplified.