He's Got the Whole World in His Hands (Damsel), Digital photograph, 2008.
Photography by Kate V. Robertson.
For the past six years my practice has been focussed on the
creation of sculptural assemblages whose origins are found objects. The
resulting process of building beneath, propping up, or the assembly of a
support structure for these objects discusses the human desire to raise certain
materials up.
My recent sculptures have drawn together exotic woods, found remnants of man-made industrial design, animal bones of varying value, and natural minerals, into acts of careful balance. These assemblages are details of a supposed colonial detritus, cast-offs repurposed into playful formations which hint at familiar characteristics of unspecified eras; they begin with nods to ancient monoliths and end with the flippancy of a stick of chewing gum. The gesture of standing stones, rounded metals, balanced oil-based products, is a direct glance at the basic human desires of standing in, collecting from, forming of, and ultimately dominating the surrounding natural world that represents both paradise and prison. They demonstrate a back-and-forth of excavations and burials; a conflation of human and natural histories that spans from our collective, wild prehistory to our present control over freely swinging doors.
The other focus of my practice is installations that combine projected films and videos, written elements and sculpture. Collectively these installations deal with the cultural structures and frameworks that arise from labour, capital, migration, and colonial shifts. Rather than showing the personalities that form the environments of our societies, the films and sculptures offer quiet views of the resulting activity and developments, in both states of rise and fall. I am interested in the intent and legacy of human built structures and their proximity to, and consumption of their immediate natural surroundings. The moving images and sculptural assemblages query the relentless necessity for materials being reincarnated and architectures being recontextualized.