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    "As a sculptor and sustainability advocate, my work has been influenced by my interest in biological forms, coupled with the natural world and science, resulting in an eclectic and unique style."

  • about me

    I’m influenced by contemporary issues and interested in questioning everyday patterns by provoking alternative forms of discourse.

     

    Art, through all its various creative expressions, can act as a powerful facilitator for social change.

    Many early pieces were driven by a desire to create figurative forms by exploring how they express emotion and relationships. These were a reflection on my early professional life in biology and environmental science. Those student years undertaking animal dissections also lead to a deep interest in human anatomy. This interest in the human form is as much about the body’s mechanical perfection as the stories they evoke of the private inner world intersecting with the outer more public realm.

    Communication and facilitation have been key components of my career and now it has entered a new phase of deeper expression through my art practice. The declining health of the environment and its relevance to all aspects of sustaining life has given me sense of urgency.

    More recent works utilise discarded materials to create intimate and tranquil sculptural experiences that encourage curiosity and optimism. The pieces aim to provide a subtle environmental message about reuse, combining used materials that would otherwise be discarded with natural fallen branches and/or seedpods. They also attempt to create a connection so that a viewer would want to keep and nurture these pieces.

    I’ve also become more interested in the intersection of art, creativity and science. While artists and scientists approach their professions in different ways and from different perspectives, they’re both fundamentally in search of understanding. I believe that when working together they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world around us.

    The Creative Catalyst seeks to support individuals and organisations to explore their creativity and discover new approaches to problem solving that ultimately I hope will lead to positive social change. (www.thecreativecatalyst.com.au)

    education


    2012
    Contemporary Art, (Community Access Program) Victorian College of the Arts

     

    2010-11

    Graduate Certificate in Visual Arts, Victorian College of the Arts

    Study Tour: VCA Visual Arts Tour,Documenta, Kassel Germany

    2008-09
    Studio Art, Victorian College of the Arts

    2007
    Studio Art, Latrobe College of Art and Design

    awards

    2013
    Best use of non-traditional materials
    Jindivick Sculpture Exhibition, Melbourne

    2011              
    Lighthouse Art Award, Winner of Youngblood category, Melbourne

    exhibitions

    Solo Exhibitions
    2014
    Project Reclaim & Ponder the Hoodie
    St Kilda Town Hall Gallery

    Project Reclaim, Upper West Side Melbourne

    Group Exhibitions

    2024

    Linden New Art, Design Fringe, St Kilda


    2018
    From Nature, Gasworks Port Melbourne

    2017
    From Nature, Gasworks Port Melbourne

    Beautiful Darkness, CERES Brunswick

    2016
    From Nature, Gasworks Port Melbourne

    2015
    From Nature, Gasworks Port Melbourne

    Toyota Community Spirit Gallery,Sculpture14,
    Port Melbourne

    2014
    Upper West Side, Melbourne

    25Artists@WTC, World Trade Centre, Melbourne

    Jindivick Sculpture Exhibition, Melbourne

    Lorne Sculpture Biennale, Sculpturscape

    GAIA, West Beach Bathers Pavillion, St Kilda

    The Entry, Brunswick Arts Space

    2013
    Bah Humbug, D11@Docklands, Melbourne

    Toyota Community Foundation, Sculpture Exhibition Port Melbourne

    25Artists@WTC, World Trade Centre, Melbourne

    Liveable and Sustainable, Federation Square, Melbourne

    The Second Collective, D11@Docklands, Melbourne

    Creative Sustain-Ability, St Kilda Gallery Port Phillip

    Jindivick Sculpture Exhibition, Melbourne

  • Influences

    The following are artists, resources, websites, stories etc that have provided me with inspiration and ideas. 
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    Kenneth Armitage

    Image:

    People in the Wind NGV


    I’m really drawn to his bronze work and the pieces that are optimistic about human companionship and reflect a warm vision of humanity.

    Shown here is 'People in a wind' 1950 bronze NGV

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    Louise Bourgeois

    Image: Spiders, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2018

     

    There are so many aspects to Louise that i love.... that she was still working until her mid 90's, that she was innovative and spanned installation art, expressionism and surrealism and that she used materials in such a profound way.

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    John Davies

    Image:

    The Presence Exhibition NGV 2010

     

    One of the first sculptors I came across that used an awareness of landscape, nature and ecology in his works in a subtle message about our impacts on, and relationship with, the environment. I really loved his early work with wood and the organic connection he made to the fragile and beautiful environments he was inspired by.

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    Antony Gormley

    Image:

    'Inside Australia' 2006 NGV

     

    I think originally it was the way he explored the human body and its connection to space at large, in a big way with large scale impressive installations. But then you see how he engages and transforms the subjective experience into a collective and active engagement.

    He's also not afraid and uses his own body, intimately, to express the space human beings inhabit.
     

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    John Davies

    Image: MCA exhibition 2013

     

    Anish Kapoor is public art at its finest, big bold monumental artworks with strong saturated colours. Whether its the experimentation with materials and forms, the vibrant colours or the distortion of space...his pieces are engaging.

    At at the recent MCA exhibition (March 2013), there was a diversity of surfaces. Some with a deep unreflective pigment, others a translucent resin and others contrasted with super-reflective surfaces. The pieces were full of contrasts, a fascination with darkness and light, presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place and the solid and the intangible.

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    Ron Mueck

    Image: NGV Exhibition

     

    Ron's use of materials and techniques and knowing he refined his skills making puppets is enough for me. And..then you experience his work, ordinary lives and simple bodies and absolutely amazing.

  • Christo and Jeanne Claude

    Very dramatic public works with installations often wrapped around existing structures, across both land and sea. They are big, bold, organic and use the topography of the structures in a beautiful fluid way...and the fabric is central and essential.

    http://www.christojeanneclaude.net

    Andy Goldsworthy

    Im draw very much to his use of materials ice, leaves, mud, snow, seeds etc...and the way he uses his hands and found tools to prepare the arrangements. I think Im more draw to the impermanance of many of his pieces and thoughts of decay and life. I also like that the site specific nature of his works means he can be seen in both the urban and more rural and natural settings.

    Photography plays a crucial role in his art due to its often ephemeral and transient state.

    According to Goldsworthy, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.”
    http://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk/

    Ranjani Shettar

    I came across Ranjani at the NGV exhibition, Dewdrops and Sunshine.

    She has this amazing craftsmanship to her work and she uses all sorts of materials , wax, steel, wood, muslin etc and engineers these works across large spaces. While its very organic (materials help) its also very ordered and geometric and implies movement.

    /uploads/1/8/0/9/18091393/ngv_ranjani_shettar_sample.pdf

    Michelangelo di Lodovica Buonarroti Simoni

    I remember first seeing Michelangelo's David when I was 5 years old in Florence...the impression has lasted. But unlike me he actually performed human dissections in his early teens. A master sculptor of the human form creating anatomically perfect sculptures.

    "David is a symbol... as champion of a small, free community against the tyranny of greater powers. It is an ideal of courage and youthful confidence in a righteous cause, embodied in a figure carefully adjusted to the naturalistic view. The extraordinary power of assimilating study and skill as a workman have made it possible for the young sculptor to carry out together the conflicting impression of a young man, not fully grown, with head and hands too large, yet of a heroic form, and an energy fired by a great duty.

    http://www.renaissance-spell.com/Michelangelo-Sculptures.html

    The action... is momentary. The hand holds the piece of wood on which the sling is hung, easily, not grasping, but gently feeling for the proper hold. The sling runs round the back and its centre, filled with stone, is held with the left hand poised on the left shoulder, ready to be loosed. This movement, then, allows the expression of the face to be an important part of the whole story.

    The statue is too well known to say more; it is one of the great statues; the knowledge implied and the execution are both extraordinary, and yet one feels, somehow, that the youth of the artist is embodied in the youth of the statue. "

    http://www.renaissance-spell.com/Michelangelo-Sculptures.html

    World Expo Brisbane 1988

    Yep I was young and my first trip interstate with friends. I loved the whole experience but it was the sculpture park and the plaster humans scattered across the site that I was most in awe of. It hooked me and I still have the catalogue. Loads of Kenneth Armitage and a Lynn Chadwick plus many that I now understand to be renowned artists.

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