Much of my current practise is preoccupied with the point of stillness before collapse; the more precarious a physical system, the more it is responsive to the slightest provocation.
I am fascinated with the moment before a thing becomes clear; that place between being and not being, when it feels most real and most human.
When things are combined in the studio they chat with each other and decide on another way to be together.
This mingling of stuff can allow for a temporal stasis or cause a sudden shift. The alternation of movement and stillness is a rhythmic element in my kinetic pieces which expresses being alive.
Through sculpture I can play with the fabric of the physical world as a means to explore and communicate notions of connection and relationship.
I am able to physically map out an imaginary space of possible and impossible solutions, free from the concerns of practicality and purpose.
I am fascinated with the moment before a thing becomes clear; that place between being and not being, when it feels most real and most human.
When things are combined in the studio they chat with each other and decide on another way to be together.
This mingling of stuff can allow for a temporal stasis or cause a sudden shift. The alternation of movement and stillness is a rhythmic element in my kinetic pieces which expresses being alive.
Through sculpture I can play with the fabric of the physical world as a means to explore and communicate notions of connection and relationship.
I am able to physically map out an imaginary space of possible and impossible solutions, free from the concerns of practicality and purpose.
February 2021
Recent Exhibitions
Imago - A dragonfly in motion
Circus Gallery, London, May - November 2019
Solo Exhibition
Circus is 21
Circus Gallery, London, February - April 2019
Group Exhibition
Flight is a Waltz - Curio
Design Miami/Basel, Basel, June 2017
Collaboration with Dominic Harris
Presented by Priveekollektie
Flight is a Waltz
PAD London, October 2016
Collaboration with Dominic Harris
Presented by Priveekollektie
Imago - A dragonfly in motion
Circus Gallery, London, May - November 2019
Solo Exhibition
Circus is 21
Circus Gallery, London, February - April 2019
Group Exhibition
Flight is a Waltz - Curio
Design Miami/Basel, Basel, June 2017
Collaboration with Dominic Harris
Presented by Priveekollektie
Flight is a Waltz
PAD London, October 2016
Collaboration with Dominic Harris
Presented by Priveekollektie
In my words
I was born in 1973 and grew up in Aotearoa / New Zealand.
I completed a Bachelor of Visual Art majoring in sculpture at ASA in Auckland, New Zealand (now the Visual Arts Department, AUT).
Under the tutorage of James Charlton and Paul Cullen I developed an interest in installation, assemblage, film and time-based art.
In my final year I began to incorporate puppets into my installations and art performances.
In 1997 I studied live animation technique with Ramon Rivero who was Lead Performance Animator for Peter Jackson’s production of The Lord of the Rings.
I created object puppets which I toured within the solo performance Suitcase Circus, and I designed and performed puppetry professionally for theatre, films and music videos in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia
In 2007 I moved to the UK and formed the company Folded Feather, touring Suitcase Circus in the UK and internationally.
In 2011 I co-devised the theatre performance Life Still which premiered at le Théâtre aux Mains Nues in Paris, followed by a run at Suspense London Festival of Puppetry. In 2012 we took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Times described Life Still as “magical”. Life Still was a personal creative progression in my approach to objects where the object’s identity is intrinsic within the expressive language.
In 2013 I met the artist Dominic Harris and we began to collaborate on a responsive mechanical piece using the butterfly as its subject. The process of creating the artwork “Flight is a Waltz” spanned three years. The mechanism of this brass butterfly precisely synchronises the down stroke, forward tilt and spreading of the wings with a lowering of the head and the effort expressed through a lifting of the abdomen, when the wings rise the tilt inverses, their spread diminishes, and the head and the abdomen return.
Flight is a Waltz was presented at the 2017 Design Basel/Miami Exhibition, supported by six butterfly prototypes and two of Dominic's holographic butterfly studies.
I continued to be captivated by mechanisms which express life-like movement and in 2018 turned my attention to another subject; the dragonfly.
In 2019 my studies of the dragonfly were presented in a solo exhibition at Circus Gallery, Marylebone. The final study, Dragonfly Imago, uses a plywood “wobble board” base as the mechanical interface between the dragonfly and the viewer. By subtle variation of force and frequency in the depression of this base with their foot, the viewer provokes a wide range of observed dragonfly movements in the piece.
The exhibition was within the 2019 London Design Festival and a panel discussion had me talking alongside Katy Barrett (Curator of Art Collections at the Science Museum, London) and Huai-Ti Lin (Director of Neuromechanics and Bio-Inspired Technologies Laboratory, Imperial College London) about Art and Science working together.
My recent work deals with mechanical systems which are precarious. I am fascinated by how such physical systems seem to breath with their potential for cataclysmic and dramatic transformation.
A current collaboration with the artist Ingrid Pollard explores specific evocative gestures within three kinetic sculptural pieces. This has presented me with the opportunity to explore mechanical systems on a human scale, in this case these are analogous to social/cultural/political systems of racial subjugation and physical violence. The resulting artworks will be presented within a major exhibition of Ingrid’s work at Milton Keynes Gallery in 2022.
I was born in 1973 and grew up in Aotearoa / New Zealand.
I completed a Bachelor of Visual Art majoring in sculpture at ASA in Auckland, New Zealand (now the Visual Arts Department, AUT).
Under the tutorage of James Charlton and Paul Cullen I developed an interest in installation, assemblage, film and time-based art.
In my final year I began to incorporate puppets into my installations and art performances.
In 1997 I studied live animation technique with Ramon Rivero who was Lead Performance Animator for Peter Jackson’s production of The Lord of the Rings.
I created object puppets which I toured within the solo performance Suitcase Circus, and I designed and performed puppetry professionally for theatre, films and music videos in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia
In 2007 I moved to the UK and formed the company Folded Feather, touring Suitcase Circus in the UK and internationally.
In 2011 I co-devised the theatre performance Life Still which premiered at le Théâtre aux Mains Nues in Paris, followed by a run at Suspense London Festival of Puppetry. In 2012 we took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Times described Life Still as “magical”. Life Still was a personal creative progression in my approach to objects where the object’s identity is intrinsic within the expressive language.
In 2013 I met the artist Dominic Harris and we began to collaborate on a responsive mechanical piece using the butterfly as its subject. The process of creating the artwork “Flight is a Waltz” spanned three years. The mechanism of this brass butterfly precisely synchronises the down stroke, forward tilt and spreading of the wings with a lowering of the head and the effort expressed through a lifting of the abdomen, when the wings rise the tilt inverses, their spread diminishes, and the head and the abdomen return.
Flight is a Waltz was presented at the 2017 Design Basel/Miami Exhibition, supported by six butterfly prototypes and two of Dominic's holographic butterfly studies.
I continued to be captivated by mechanisms which express life-like movement and in 2018 turned my attention to another subject; the dragonfly.
In 2019 my studies of the dragonfly were presented in a solo exhibition at Circus Gallery, Marylebone. The final study, Dragonfly Imago, uses a plywood “wobble board” base as the mechanical interface between the dragonfly and the viewer. By subtle variation of force and frequency in the depression of this base with their foot, the viewer provokes a wide range of observed dragonfly movements in the piece.
The exhibition was within the 2019 London Design Festival and a panel discussion had me talking alongside Katy Barrett (Curator of Art Collections at the Science Museum, London) and Huai-Ti Lin (Director of Neuromechanics and Bio-Inspired Technologies Laboratory, Imperial College London) about Art and Science working together.
My recent work deals with mechanical systems which are precarious. I am fascinated by how such physical systems seem to breath with their potential for cataclysmic and dramatic transformation.
A current collaboration with the artist Ingrid Pollard explores specific evocative gestures within three kinetic sculptural pieces. This has presented me with the opportunity to explore mechanical systems on a human scale, in this case these are analogous to social/cultural/political systems of racial subjugation and physical violence. The resulting artworks will be presented within a major exhibition of Ingrid’s work at Milton Keynes Gallery in 2022.