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My artwork has a strong sense of the individual relying heavily on the juxtaposition of word and image to evoke the vulnerability within the human character. I utilise verbal narrative to enter into a dialogue with the viewer and endeavour to make work with scope for interpretation. I encourage viewers to draw their own meaning, building upon personal experience or tragedy, and am fascinated by the variety of responses it elicits. The combination of automatic drawing and snapshot photography with poetic and hard hitting text produces a strong, bittersweet statement about contemporary society.
I am attracted by the anonymity and mystique of found objects and use found photography in my artwork. By using my own work and ideas in conjunction with snippets of other peoples lives I blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. The photographs in the My Accidental Life series dont represent archetypal snapshots, they are pictures that would normally be overlooked or edited out of a family album. We only capture positive experiences and very rarely the mundane and everyday. There is a structure of unwritten rules that applies to domestic photography which is passed down through generations, events are set up and performed for the camera according to tradition. For example, blowing out candles, carving the turkey and signing the register. Most snapshots only have meaning to the photographer and subjects that appeared in the photograph. As the Accidental Life pictures are cropped or blurred to obscure the identity of the participants they are anonymous and often play on the
traditions of domestic photography. By enlarging the photograph it transcends the domain of snapshot photography, thus defamiliarising the familiar. In the age of digital photography unsatisfactory shots are instantly erased, therefore accidental and blurred images will become rarer.
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