My works often begin with an object. Looking at the connotations an object holds within society, my work seeks to subvert this relationship, in a way that makes it possible for a material like jelly to become as interesting as bronze. Of course, my relationship to the object is significant because in this occurs a poeticism which is difficult to articulate in simple terms, which drives me to make work about it. There is an intrinsic need, as a human, to find poetry in the mundane, the ordinary or the unromantic in order to create meaning in the world. By animating, giving a voice or emotional state to the object, I subtly change how it functions. Jelly, for instance, becomes something to be examined as if it were equally as useful as the human body. In the same sense, approaching something from a unique perspective is important to how I communicate through my practice of film-making, sculptural investigations and installations.

​

When encountering the object, the haptic relationship to material becomes entirely different when it is experienced through a rendering of the same materiality rather than the physical material itself. Therefore, my work attempts to expose what the poetics of the prosaic looks like or feels like by applying technological mediation in a perhaps hopelessly romantic way. Through using Cinema 4d and other rendering software, a recent work entitled Cloudy Tears referenced the language of the clouds we encounter in the everyday, but simultaneously removed them from their original material so that they find the space in which they became romantic once again. Through the large installation I created and script I wrote they speak a language that is more poetic than communicative.

​

Walter Benjamin’s theory of the aura has affected how I go about this in various ways. Its innate connection to the moving image, in the idea that an image can produce an “affect” (in Deleuze’s terms) within the viewer who  encounters it, meaning the poetic encounter with the object happens but through a screen. However, this relationship is important, as the objects then begin to shift between their physical three-dimensionality and digital two-dimensionality. This is why the work I create is installed in three-dimensional space, in order to reiterate the fact that it does shift between planes and is key to understanding how technology has affected our ability to feel and empathise with the object, be it a flower or a loved one.

​

With technological advancements, human connectivity is increasingly machinic. My practice attempts to catch up with contemporary technology as it allows both myself, and the audience, to almost become a part of the system at work in order to understand it, but this time from an emotional perspective. Essentially, my practice stems from re-defining our relationship with the material world. Through subtle humour within my work I want to make visible the moment at which a poetic encounter with an object has been replaced by a simulacrum of itself through technological interfaces.