"Voyage of the Beagle" Drawing

Currently creating a
stop motion ghost story 'Heirlooms'.


The voyeuristic aspect of my work
may stem from a childhood wish
to gain access to restricted spaces
(such as a hidden room
in a dollhouse).

My work involves the frustration of
being prevented from fulfilling
wishes, by only allowing glimpses
of these inaccessible worlds. By
creating intricate, small worlds I am
suggesting the desire to retreat
from something threatening like
society.

Yet I am also interested in the
contradictions and conflict this
inspires; it appears that by reducing
the world to a small and repetitious
environment you create a sense of
safety, but perhaps all you are doing
is internalising the initial threat.

Images such as rats eating from
dining room tables not only evoke
feelings of disgust but of childish
play. I am perhaps attempting to
control fragile memories and
perceptions of childhood built on
cardboard foundations.

The structures I create are
deliberately unsecure, unsound, in
order to summon up an atmosphere
of unease, this is a fragile world that
could topple down at any moment.
Cardboard is also interesting to work
with, as it is often viewed as a 'poor'
material, only salvaged by the
dispossessed.