Artist's Statement

My aim as a performance artist and sculptor is to use humour and irony to highlight issues and concerns relating to the exclusion of members of disenfranchised and unempowered groups, including non-humans.

I seek to question the priorities and value systems colluded on within the establishment, and enforced by dominator culture via the media; while examining the validity and tenability of an exclusively anthropocentric status quo. 



Vulnerable and under-valued individuals are harmed by the mistrust and misconception of a supposed popular view. It may be that those who are damaged by society further harm themselves through negative interactions with significant others and their environment.
Parallel and related themes in my work include the notion of the Outsider in society and also in art. I am engaged in an examination which seeks to qualify the value of an individual creative response, and the validity of a minority view.

In my performance work I try symbolically to heal the harm I see around me. To teach, heal and represent the spirit world was once the remit of the shaman, and also to reintroduce a spiritual, magical dimension into the equation. My view is that the contemporary performance artist, not the priest, is the natural inheritor of the Shaman’s role.

The ‘avatar’ I employ in my work engages in seemingly ritualized activities that are reminiscent of those employed in Shamanism, whilst referencing the language of established artistic practice. These activities focus on concern for the natural environment.