Series
Divisions & Connections
Divisions & Connections is an ongoing series about the divisions and connections we build between each other as our society becomes ever more polarised. This series of portraits of people from around the world incorporates their own deeply personal imagery associated with their experience of a divided and connected society. The wire fences, electricity pylons and other human constructions we see in these prints create arbitrary lines across our natural world, dividing neighbours and connecting distant communities. This series consists of copper plate etchings, moving away from the natural materials I often work with and centring the human hand and artifice as an integral component of each print, much as the divisions and connections in our society are artificial constructs. Repetitive patterns permeate the images, reflecting the cyclical nature with which our societies forge connections or create divisions over time. The works in this series encourage the viewer to reflect on the personal responsibility we all bear for the divisions we put up, driving each other further apart, and how each one of us has the power to extend connections across seemingly insurmountable divides to bring us closer together to build a kinder, friendlier, more forgiving world in which everyone feels welcome at the table.
Our Story
Our Story is an ongoing series about the hidden experiences that unite us. In an increasingly divisive world, this series aims to reveal our fundamental shared humanity by bringing to life hidden personal narratives and universal experiences among a diversity of people living vastly different lives. The works combine short self-confessional texts with emotive portraits, stylistically mirroring the deeply personal stories we are compelled to share in globally publicised social media posts that feel almost anonymous due to the intimate and isolating ways in which we interact with our digital devices. Through these works, I am questioning how social media shapes the ways in which we think about our identities and how we open discourse about who we are. To what degree are our experiences and identities shaped by the expectations of others (both in the virtual and real world) versus our own lived truths? The prints in Our Story are stone lithographs, for which I create my imagery using heritage limestones bearing their own unique histories, scars and imperfections, mirroring the perceived imperfections we hope to hide behind our masks. Starting with my own personal stories, the series will expand to encompass those of others, curating a compendium of shared human narratives across geography, time, and disparate personal identities and lived experiences.
Unmasked (2024-2025)
Unmasked is a hopeful series that envisions a world in which we all feel free to live true to our inner self without curating socially conforming versions of ourselves through the “masks” we present to the world. In Unmasked I bring to life an idealised reality in which queer people are free to shun the masculine ideal, in which neurodivergent people no longer feel compelled to edit their thoughts and behaviours, and in which we are all free to reveal our true self. The series comprises stone lithographs and mokuhanga prints (water-based woodblock prints). Through stone lithography, I have strived to reveal the hidden “flaws” within the limestones I work with to create the final artwork. The unique veins, textures, chips and scratch marks left behind through the processing of the stone surface mirror the imperfections we see within ourselves and try to hide from world. My mokuhanga prints incorporate natural inks and pigments that bring to mind an ancestral natural origin state that we all share. Unmasked asks us to envisage and create a future in which our self-perceived imperfections and flaws are celebrated as integral parts of our fully revealed natural selves.
