Breaking the Rules

My work is a call to arms. I am quietly devastated by the current political climate and the lack of tolerance evidenced by the general mood of people on the street.

We are faced, post-covid, with migrants remaining unprocessed and imprisoned in the UK, the concept of a Broken Britain with sky-high interest rates, strikes and the cost-of-living crisis, the casual misogyny in Spain epitomised by that kiss at the Women’s World Cup, the French ban on abayas in schools, the removal of abortion rights in the US, the increased abuse the LGBTQ community is experiencing, the lack of basic healthcare for trans people worldwide, and most recently the atrocities being conducted in Ukraine and Palestine. 

Despite this, I believe in the essential goodness of individuals, that they become mis-educated, misguided, misinformed, misled. 

Inspiration occurs, in spite of the state of the world, on a daily, even hourly, basis generated by the smallest events: a falling shadow, a drape of cloth, a child’s anecdote, intelligence. 

More formal, direct influence for the current work comes from specific places.

Influence

Sharon Maas’ protagonist in Of Marriageable Age  - an absolute masterpiece in unveiling - describes the essential sameness of people in a way that her young daughter could understand, using different sized jars with coloured water. The essence of this idea is embodied in each piece of this series.

This collection is further inspired by the elusive, impactful master, Banksy. I find his work intelligently cynical, and retrospectively obvious. Following a visit in the summer of 2023 to Barcelona’s MOMA museum, one piece resonated with and crystalised the building sense of devastation, triggering this collection:

The greatest crimes in the world are not created by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It’s people who follow orders who drop bombs and massacre villages.   Banksy

Building blocks

The premise for ‘Breaking the Rules’ is somewhat contradictory, establishing a rigid system only to break it. 

The grid formations, the  ‘ladders’, evoke regularity and structure, emphasising the essential sameness of the human race. The shadows thrown onto the background represent the impact on our surroundings left by our presence. 

If the ladders represent unwound DNA sequences, skin and skeleton - the components from which every human is composed - they also embody the story being imprinted onto the skin & skeleton by individual thoughts and experiences. The ladder widths reference 35mm format photographic film used in motion pictures, encapsulating the stories and making them an integral part of the whole. 

The regular system of ladders is disrupted in some way in each piece, representing character, personality, or rebellion, exploring the distance within, those ideas that sit between skeleton and skin, that make us individual, and the distance without, between the individual and the cultural, community or family system that supports them.