Mar
29th
Sat
29th
Selected works
My work is bound up in my fascination with materials and the physicality of making things. Truth to materials - lead, plaster, slate, stone, wood, metal - and the processes involved in their manipulation, are fundamental to most of my work.
The layering of plaster as both a means of covering and revealing, together with the subversion of traditional uses of construction materials allows a more fluid, experimental examination of form and function.
The themes dealt with are similarly bound up in the world of construction, but also in my Hispanic heritage. References to utilitarian structures – water towers, granaries, dovecots – become metaphors for the ways in which human society protects itself against the outside world. ‘Houses’ without doors, structures which allow no access or exit, empty courtyards and interiors invert normal logic. By referencing the Hispanic world they become exotic and less easily read, increasing their allusive power.
Themes of shelter, protection, aggression and insularity, the contesting of space, are general themes in my sculpture which is at times representational but more often abstract. I feel that abstraction frees me from the detail of representation allowing for invention and the unexpected, a more experimental approach whose outcome is more open to interpretation.
Colour and its incorporation in sculpture is a particular concern, an expressive element I have tried to utilize at various points.
