Exhibition Statement
As a carer of a child with communication challenges, my work has taken an interpretive, process-based direction by which I try to grasp, enter and respond to the gap that exists between words and mark making. Using text, drawing, sculpture, film, video, and audio I focus on a process resembling pseudo-empirical anthropological research that traverses fact and fiction, real and virtual, mother and child, carer and the cared for. Exploring the possibilities inherent in the relationship between art and language I dissect symbols, drawings, letters, words, and texts through play, repetition, and arrangements that challenge received definitions of knowledge, meaning and content. Where limitations appear to exist, new possibilities of understanding open through line, sound and image. By turning theories such as linguistic determinism on its head, I want to unlock how empathy, silence, unintelligible annunciations or ‘illegible’ marks hold meaning for those with limited communication.
This work explores what educational psychologists call tadpole drawings, early childhood representations of the human figure. With the placement and combination of parts, legs, arms, eyes and so on being used to identify cognitive age. With a daughter on the precipice of adulthood but with a cognitive age as diagnosed in a linear culture as much younger than her years, I focus entirely on process rather than outcomes. I copy, repeat, deconstruct and create multiples of my interpretation of the tadpole and its various parts, and through this process attempt to gain an empathetic understanding of her ambiguous inner world.
The short film explores the invisible lines and the spaces in between signing communication, in this case, Makaton, which is used to augment spoken language.
As a carer of a child with communication challenges, my work has taken an interpretive, process-based direction by which I try to grasp, enter and respond to the gap that exists between words and mark making. Using text, drawing, sculpture, film, video, and audio I focus on a process resembling pseudo-empirical anthropological research that traverses fact and fiction, real and virtual, mother and child, carer and the cared for. Exploring the possibilities inherent in the relationship between art and language I dissect symbols, drawings, letters, words, and texts through play, repetition, and arrangements that challenge received definitions of knowledge, meaning and content. Where limitations appear to exist, new possibilities of understanding open through line, sound and image. By turning theories such as linguistic determinism on its head, I want to unlock how empathy, silence, unintelligible annunciations or ‘illegible’ marks hold meaning for those with limited communication.
This work explores what educational psychologists call tadpole drawings, early childhood representations of the human figure. With the placement and combination of parts, legs, arms, eyes and so on being used to identify cognitive age. With a daughter on the precipice of adulthood but with a cognitive age as diagnosed in a linear culture as much younger than her years, I focus entirely on process rather than outcomes. I copy, repeat, deconstruct and create multiples of my interpretation of the tadpole and its various parts, and through this process attempt to gain an empathetic understanding of her ambiguous inner world.
The short film explores the invisible lines and the spaces in between signing communication, in this case, Makaton, which is used to augment spoken language.