I am a South African artist currently living and practicing in Bristol, UK.
My work is centred around emerging and shifting patterns of transformation, connection, and possibility. Both technically and conceptually, I seek to deconstruct and subvert binary paradigms, towards an alternative narrative of fluidity, possibility, and inclusion.
I create, collect, dismantle, and redesign marks as symbols, developing a system of abstract signs through form, material, and process. This particular visual alphabet consists of offcuts, incidental strokes, and more intentional, repetitive explorations of personally significant objects. The compositions impose a kind of visual ‘dyslexia’, requiring imaginative readings beyond familiar patterning of ‘language’, and so what each mark represents may depend on interpretation. The emergent abstract designs pose questions and open dialogue around notions of framing, visibility, belonging, transition, chaos, deviance, and perception.
Playfully juxtaposing, layering, and collaging marks as repeating motifs, I explore endless possible outcomes, and consider a re-writing of normative attitudes towards grouping, orientation, and order. This improvised act of deconstructing and re-patterning recurring forms is inextricable from the concepts represented by each mark and evolving design.
The woven, encrypted shapes may act as windows into the neuroqueer experience, where thought, emotion, environment, and identity intersect, dissolve, and transform simultaneously on a single plane. These neuroqueer sensibilities implicit in my work create conceptual continuity between projects that may otherwise appear visually disparate.
Alongside my artistic practice, I am a support worker for people with learning disabilities. To decompress, reflect, and generate ideas, I take long walks in nature or through the city, and have a regular embodiment practice. Discussion within my local inclusive faith community in Bristol, as well as within my wider creative network, often provides a departure point for innovation in my practice.
