Sheet lead & cast wax 2018
Exhibited Holburne Museum Bath & St Mary’s Calne 2019, Milsom Place Bath 2020, Black Swan Arts & Gallery at the Station Frome 2022.
Perfect symbols of fatalist consumer society, Body Bags weigh in at 5kg & 10kg empty and came about through re-imagining weight I have recently lost. I wanted to consider the infeasibility of carrying it around on a regular basis, but whilst the weight was part of me, inescapably that is exactly what I did. I am fascinated by how bodies can change size, shape & composition yet we can delude ourselves that we are not in control, rather we are victim to society for misconceptions & insecurities, looking to retail therapy to save us from ourselves. The void inside the bags, leaving the manufacture & construction seams clear to see, speaks volumes in abhorrence at the trickery of this substitution theory.
Weight is a small artefact, exquisitely worked, exploring weight of meaning in form. Linked to Body Bags it asks questions about our obsession with consumerism and overconsumption, suggesting perhaps the weight in our pockets might be our downfall.
Six Pack is made from cast wax, coated in lard; perceived by many as the epitome of fat, something disgusting. The use of tablet format to conceptualise our own body fat externally provokes a sense of revulsion that we seem to have lost in our society-wide acceptance of obesity as the new norm. The work can be configured in a variety of formats: Bellyful, Pound of Flesh or Six Pack, all playfully alluding to our obsessions with excess in diet, extortion & bodybuilding. The use of lard has a subtle and more hopeful homage to Joseph Beuys who believed in it’s healing properties that might greatly benefit our society.