About
As a mature student I completed my BA in Fine Art in 2010 at the University of Nottingham. I originally studied Textile and Knitwear Design at Leicester Polytechnic and had a long career as a knitwear Designer in the East Midlands.
My degree work was inspired by childhood memories of home and included installation, film and photography.
In ‘Overlay’, my degree work, found objects in the form of unwanted household furniture and furnishings are combined with the process of layering. I have collaged, embedded and camouflaged objects. The result has been shrouds, veils and coverings in materials as diverse as aluminium and icing sugar.
I have approached the subject of memory as something that needs to be preserved and protected. Translucent fabrics have been used as a metaphor for memory which often lacks clarity and detail. Concealment has been used in a paradoxical way to reveal the imagined history of the objects.
I have been inspired by memories of neighbours living in the street of Victorian terraced houses where I grew up. Houses where carpets were laid one on top of one another, wallpaper was hung over its previous layers and beds were piled with surplus army blankets. History sometimes seemed to repeat itself in each identical house. Certain houses continually attracted the same sort of people. It was as though the houses were overlaid with the memories and histories of their occupants.
My aim throughout has been to transform everyday domestic objects into something ethereal and otherworldly; to overlay the mundane with an element of magic.