Beautiful Cages 

My Paper Cages....

My cut out installations are made for an audience, who are essentially important to the meaning of the artworks.

I hand cut all my work as this allows me to have a close relationship with it. This Expressionistic approach makes it personal and produces a narrative... a narrative that requires movement.

The works are immersive and atmospheric, decorative yet emotional. I would like the viewer to wonder... why things are the way they are... And by stripping away the physical and material appearances, and instead using words I seek to highlight the internal realm as opposed to the superficial. I look at how we can relate on a humane and human level, to shift the focus to feelings and thought rather than surface judgments. I take away specific identities and circumstances, so that what is left is words and interactions, often cruel and tortured, so that the viewer experiences these words themselves out of context. It is really about how we can all be alienated and isolated and feel hurt if such things were said to us, or if we felt these thoughts within us. What happens when you see the word 'weird', 'wrong' 'should' or 'freak'? How do you feel?

Themes of status symbols, humanity, community, psychology, isolation, fear and man-made ideas feature in my art as a trail of clues. What is it that we think exactly and where does it come from? Are our views and feelings towards ourselves and others fixed? Are they taught and illusory?... Can they be unlearned? I am concerned with the history of identity within established status' and hierarchies embedded into mainstream society.

I convey the struggle of being an individual in a world of 'the other'. This relationship between the individual and society can conflict and insists that we must define oneself. This complex situation is both protective and harmful and it facinates me how this is inevitably part of the need to belong and be. The inside (individual's 'space') and outside (social space) are separate yet try to relate somehow with difficulty.

I look at the universal experience of words, emotions and interactions, as well as people who feel they lack normalisation and autonomy. 

The mind is controlled in so many invisible ways, by existing within an environment and with others... and the only way to connect and converse is to empathise and apply emotion. The only way to eradicate these social labels and standards is to relate on a deeper level with everyone.