Statement

Responding to ideas of Surrealism, femininity and the subconscious mind, my work explores the effects of thwarted or suppressed creativity with particular reference to hysteria, dreaming and trance states. Using as a starting point my own struggles with inspiration, I challenge the Surrealist belief that femininity is an innate source of abundant creativity.

Pinhole photography allows me to embrace the Surrealist love of coincidence and fortuitous accident. The pinhole camera - without lens, viewfinder or shutter - relies entirely on guesswork to operate. The imges it captures over an exposure period of minutes exhibit a dreamlike idiosyncrasy: straight edges appear curved, distance becomes arbitrary, colours shift. Playing on Surrealist notions of the automatic image, I relinquish a measure of control to the pinhole camera, allowing the operations of chance to play a part in the creation of my photographs. The camera becomes a conduit between the visible and invisible, the tangible and the intangible, the conscious mind and the subconscious.

Multiple versions of myself manifest themselves in mirrors, blurring the boundaries between waking and sleep. Evocative of a fractured consciousness, these reflected simulacra suggest alter egos or uncanny doppelgangers.

"Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all... Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial"

Andre Breton