My Fine Art practice is expressed through a wide range of media; from drawing and sculpture, ceramics and textiles, to video and installation; from the real to the virtual. I match the media to my message which relates to my own particular feminist perspective. It may even appear to cross over into design as I often play with interior products such as wallpaper, wall-tiles and wall-hangings as these ‘decorative’ or ‘soft’ furnishings have traditionally been associated with ‘the feminine’ and ‘the domestic’. I also often exploit art historical forms, as they allude to tradition, culture and ‘fashionable’ aspirations of elegance and refinement, in order to subvert them. My practice, as a whole, draws on traditional ‘essentialist’ ideas and metaphors relating to femininity such as ‘woman as ornament’ and is concerned with the way in which female identity and sexuality are socially and culturally constructed. Much of my work is predominantly concerned with exploring and reflecting on contemporary representations of women in the mass media; particularly within advertising. I therefore frequently reference fashion and beauty magazines, in order to expose an array of stereotypes. The transference of these images into a different register, of drawing, focuses attention on the prevalence of particular poses and expressions, highlighting their homogeneity, pervasiveness and remarkable lack of progressiveness. These images which may at first sight seem innocuous are actually quite insidious as they both reinforce traditional ‘gender binaries’ and perpetuate the ‘myth of beauty’- preying on our fears as well as our fantasies. In this way, these images reflect the way in which our contemporary consumer culture is a mass of contradictions. They are simultaneously seductive yet destructive, expressive yet repressive. I, myself, confess to having a love/hate relationship with them. My work therefore plays with this ambivalence, concealing an underlying instability. Like the images they critique, my work often has a superficial surface attraction (in order to draw the viewer in) but on closer inspection (or introspection) it is inherently unsettling. I often aim to destabilize the viewer by subverting traditional archetypes and conventions (E.g. pretty Delft-like patterns are composed of uteri and over-sized sperm!). Through strategies such as these, I try to disrupt the ‘gaze’. Some of my work has also been concerned with questioning the implications of ‘the technological gaze’ – how new technologies and simulation may affect future constructions of identity and sexuality – particularly in installations which ensnare the viewer in tangible, sensory spaces which are simultaneously visually alluring yet slightly disturbing. All my work stems from a fear that: 'Femininity is trapped in the image, but the viewer is snared to...' (Judith Williamson Between Image and Representation) There is also an underlying, albeit subconscious, autobiographical dimension as I think my work relates to the way in which my own unstable childhood was concealed behind material privilege and pretence.
