My practice is about the interconnectedness of perception, embodied experience and the physical world of objects. Through a study of devotional objects, which include Indian Tantric paintings and Christian relics, I am interested in the aesthetic and conceptual transformation of matter into meaning, and the role of embodied experience in this meaning-making process. Drawing upon phemonemological theories of Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida’s philosophy of touch, I am interested in the interrelationship between the body and mind, the material and the immaterial.
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My current work involves deconstructing and re-making relics using printmaking, film, sculpture, digital and cameraless photography and collage. In these collaged ‘reproductions’, materials are playfully transposed; sacred bone might be recast as a rock; gold embellishment rendered through paper cut-outs. ​Photographed and transposed again in the form of dark aquatints, I have exhibited the prints amongst a film work which depicts my hand and body moving beneath the surface, grasping to touch the display. Evoking the venerative act of relic-touching, the installation examines the role of the body in the activation and authentication of meaning.
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In a practice of art-making and education, I draw upon pedagogical theories of Embodied Learning and New Materialism, in which I seek to examine how art-making, the inter-relationship between bodies and matter, could seek to counter a sense of disconnectedness or disembodiment.