Throughout my practice there has been a themes that my work has surrounded such as family relationships/dynamics and identity. Often my work is using found objects and sourcing conflicting materials to accompany the objects. I am mostly drawn to household objects or objects with childhood connotations such as toys, clothes or furniture.
Looking more at the current covid situation and being instructed that it is no longer safe to enter the homes of loved ones that you do not live with. After a quick internet search, images making a mockery of Boris Johnson’s disastrous approach to provide rules and guidelines I came across a drawing by Steve Bell stating the words “Wash Hands, go Home, Die”. Not that I am particularly interested in politics nor do I want to make my work political. I just found that this phrase resonated with some things i had been thinking about , in relation to the insinuation that was made that if you visited family/’broke the rules’ you were instantly putting lives at risk and essentially told they would get the virus and die. Continuing with the phrase I made a collage image of a house whilst thinking about typical ‘live, laugh love’ home decor.
With working in a nursery I come across broken/unwanted things very often. Yesterday I got part of the front of a doll’s house.This part of the dolls house reminded me of an exhibition by Shani Rhys James Out of the dolls house, where she featured a red dolls house upon a red table. I find the installation of this work also intriguing; the dark room filled with rubble along with an automata figure of a victorian woman tapping her finger on an iron disk. These works together are exposing the constraints of being a mother, a wife and a child. To be seen and not heard. It appears as if you would walk into this room with caution and feel intimidated.
https://culturecolony.com/news/out-dolls-house-shani-rhys-james
