Biografia
My drawing practice involves re-appropriating mass media imagery either in the form of newspaper/ internet images or photographs I have taken from news stories on television. I use the camera on continuous shoot to freeze frame and slow down split second facial expressions and body language; to reveal mannerisms, sequences of movement and interactions. I use series of photographs as source material to create drawings on long rolls of tracing paper that produce an unfolding narrative. I trace imagery as this process enables me to fragment and overlap images, to reference the many sides of a story or event.
The drawing I am currently working on, Transparency, (2010, ink on tracing paper, 1200 x 85 cm), is a work in progress on the subject of the 2010 general election, the new coalition government, and my feelings about how political ideologies are contained within ambiguous rhetoric, such as; ‘transparency’, ‘big society’, and ‘freedom of choice’. In this drawing, I seek to highlight the reports in the national and local news regarding the present government’s ideology of, ‘rolling back the state’, as I am concerned about the potential impact on communities and public services.
I am interested in the fields of documentary and oral history, and how fine artists can employ methodologies from these practices to represent the views of people often marginalised from dominant cultural discourse. Genre’s influencing my fine art practice include; animation, comic strips, Japanese picture scrolls, History painting, oral history, ethnography, social realism, and portraiture.
