My practice is centred on the universality of grief, particularly on distasteful statements that are often said to us during circumstances of loss (i.e. “Get over it”, “You need to move on”). In Studio 4, I have been focused on various mediums, such as vinyl, projection, texture paste, lino printing, and oil paint, to express this universal experience, whilst also exploring how composition and medium can alter the interpretation. However, text is a salient aspect of my practice, included in each piece of my work. The simplicity of the statements I use are generalisable to all viewers, each intimately understood and deciphered.

Jenny Holzer’s ‘Inflammatory Essays’ is piece of work I am consistently drawn back to. The simplicity of coloured posters filled with ambiguous text inspires me to remain minimal with my work. While I still enjoy experimenting with mediums, I deliberately use text to bring my pieces back into the same context of grief, but use my experimentation to aid in imagery.

Towards the end of my final year, I have been working on how childhood can alter interpretation, with the specific idea of childhood innocence and purity. I have created paintings, and for the interim show projected various home videos from the 1980s to the early 2000s of me and my mum, paired with one of five statements (e.g. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself”). The projection played on a loop, repeating the same videos over and over, but changed the statement so that each viewer would differ in the statement that they read. While my degree show piece will be a step away from these experiments, I find pleasure in using figures of vulnerability and innocence to enhance the impact of the statements, and intend to incorporate this concept in my final exhibition piece alternatively.