ARTIST STATEMENT

Iron and steel are the language of my practice. I am drawn to these materials for their inherent contradictions: strength and fragility, permanence and decay, weight and the illusion of flight. Through welding and the deliberate weathering of their surfaces, I create sculptures that appear both ancient and contemporary, as though they have endured the passage of time.

My work explores humanity’s aspirations, its vulnerabilities, and the traces we leave behind. handcrafting each sculpture using age old, traditional techniques to move the metal: English wheel, shaping over an anvil, hand forming, stretching, shrinking and panel beating creates a direct physical relationship between myself and the material, allowing the process of making to remain embedded within the finished work. I am interested in the tension between what we build and what survives, creating sculptures that occupy the space between archaeology and imagination.

My series, Re-Rehearsing the Fracture: Gatekeeper I and II, Relic of Flight I and II, and The Weight We Carry, began as an exploration of humanity‘s enduring desire to transcend earthly limitations. Rather than depicting birds or aircraft, the sculptures take the form of imagined artefacts from a forgotten civilisation. Their abstract forms suggest remnants whose original purpose has been lost, evoking a culture driven by the desire to rise beyond the earth. Through this imagined archaeology, I explore invention, aspiration and the human impulse to reach beyond ourselves. 

The companion series Why Not Peace?: Why Not Peace I and II and Insecure, extends this narrative through the human figure. The weathered, simplified forms stand as quiet witness to conflict, displacement and loss. Rather than depicting specific events, the sculptures reflect on the contradictions within human civilisation: our capacity for imagination,  invention and achievement alongside our capacity for destruction. The series asks what remains when those contradictions become embedded in the history we leave behind.

Together, these two bodies of work form a single conversation about aspiration, achievement and what ultimately remains. Re-Rehearsing the Fracture imagines what might survive from a civilisation‘s ambitions, while Why Not Peace? considers what might remain of its humanity. The sculptures exist between archaeology and prophecy, inviting viewers to consider not only what has been lost, but what future generations might one day inherit from us.

I reduce form to its essential elements, allowing material, texture and silhouette to communicate beyond literal representation. My sculpture invite contemplation rather than certainty, asking what future archaeologists might make of the fragments we leave behind: a civilisation capable of extraordinary invention, yet still struggling to understand itself.