Artist Statement, 2008
Although the work in ‘the playground’ spans a couple of years the recurring theme of awkward adolescence predominates. The adolescent provides a vehicle in which to portray our vulnerability and fragility as it can be a time of isolation and dislocation. These are two themes which seem to constantly emerge in my work. Before the advent of social conditioning it is in children that our baseness lies. As William Golding so aptly and ironically commented in his classic tale of human nature gone awry, ‘after all we aren’t savages really….’
The idea of masking is another recurring motif in my work. This is portrayed through either the physicality of a hood or mask, or by the actual obscuring of the facial features, lending itself to be interpreted in a more metaphorical context. In relation to today’s ideology the ‘hood’ is becoming more of a symbol of antisocial behaviour, the teenage hoodlum, an analogy for the breakdown of family communication and the erosion of ethics and morality. One dons a hood to be unidentifiable, to commit acts of ‘terror’.
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