The loop played an important part on my MA journey both conceptually and practically as a means by which I could make a two dimensional material into a three dimensional structure.

A month before my final MA Show , Estelle Woolley and I staged a pop up exhibition in the old Odeon Cinema in Chester. We called this exhibition Loop as the loop was a feature of both of practices.


MA Exhibition Statement

My fine art sculptural practice explores connections: not only the physical connections that are an essential part of my making process, but also abstract connections where concepts and ideas intertwine and new possibilities emerge.

These sculptural forms have resulted from a "compassionate involvement" 1 I have established with my materials. Through a process of handling and manipulation I allow their materiality to become visible and influence the final form, working within the principle of truth to materials. The process of folding in my practice is very much concerned with touch and the tactile register but also articulates my own tacit or implied knowledge, a knowledge that is derived from my own bodily memory. Through this knowledge gained through practice I juxtapose textile processes and technologies with unexpected materials in a rhizomatic manner, thus allowing new forms to emerge, which are by their very nature open to multiple interpretations.

Whilst I do not set out to impose a narrative, the formal aspects and materials of my sculptures suggest connections and thus invite various readings from the viewer; connections evoked from the associative meaning of the materials and personal memories, which can never be avoided. As I strive to make three dimensions out of two, the loop is the unifying and connecting feature of my work. The loop however opens up a distinctly feminine dialogue, as formally it makes connections with the Baroque, with drapery and with the sensual. The labyrinthine structures created from the process of looping invite the eye to caress and undress the work and thus appeal to our haptic sensibility.

The perpendicular elements I introduce ‘pierce’ and ‘puncture’ this feminine aesthetic, sometimes in a brutal manner, opening up a masculine/feminine conversation and establishing connections with embodiment and how we experience works of art as a bodily experience. By using car tyres in a similar way to which I have previously applied to textiles, the work continues these conversations and also establishes a common language and makes visual links between all three sculptures, whilst introducing a sense of dissonance, contradiction and paradox into my practice.

1.Marks,L.U.(2000). The Skin of the Film. Durham N.C: Duke University Press, p.141