MFA Degree Show 2019
Nothing Alien is Human to Us
graduate solo exhibition at Platforms Arts Belfast
This ongoing body of work explores themes of historical absence and the uncanny in relation to domestic space, after a period of heightened anxiety and close proximity to my family home.
Using narrative and fiction as a frame to explore objects, I employed mimicry and repetition through casting as a site to reify the cultural and social values of sentimental surroundings.
Initially reacquainting myself with artefacts acquired through the line of matriarchal inheritance (such as dishware, kitchen utensils and Pyrex paraphernalia) and responded through writing to the varying status these wares maintained to remain in circulation or to be redefined as obsolete. see The Mincers
Reflecting on how this determination also applies to the user; the obliging and invisible domiciliary worker, the unpaid (and usually female) counterpart of the homogenised home, the work developed to quietly subvert domestic roles aligning with gender bias that then impacts the worth of unseen labour.
By incorporating tradition and reappropriating form, the surreality of a domestic interior becomes a space to collapse and rebuild a reimagined household.
Due to Covid restrictions and Platform Arts relocation of premises, this project was delayed by over a year, I'm grateful it still happened and to those whom supported me throughout its development.
Documentation of the exhibition can be seen here:
Photo Credit: Ben Malcolmson