Ideas and Thoughts

10/02/2025 - recent focus - 

In third year of undergraduate studies I took part in an art and science module, which inspired me to look into artists such as Nam june Paik, Olafur Eliasson, and more recently Anicka Yi. During this time, I also travelled to Canada for 4 months to study and exhibit at NSCAD, which introduced artworks which would often link to the experience of indigenous people of the area. In the Port Campus (Loggia Gallery) the ‘Worried Earth: Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief’ exhibition incorporated techniques including use of mycelium, nature and ideas of technology in the landscape, and deeply processed tactile photography; very inspiring. My research and final dissertation featured the merging of nature and technology in relation to the Sublime as a concept; coining the term ‘trans-sublime’. See here: https://issuu.com/docs/85fea9eac346ea7c1bbe5e65f0e6e855. My final show highlighted my sculptural talent, with one featured in the Courier, and the connecting mixed media works. I incorporated self-built electronics, woodwork, and casting, into the pieces. I was awarded the Farquhar Reid Trust award, and two works were acquired by the Dundee University Museum Archive. I am currently in the process of forming an artist collective around ideas around the recent past informing a new ‘retro-future’. In particular, a goal of reconfiguring science fiction to represent a more accurate view of our future. Our ideas board so far can be seen here: https://miro.com/welcomeonboard/am8xRXNhNlRSNlZBNzhyVWl0Y1kwdkhFS2FjUXBCZ DBuMWhZd3ZOczZvNTljcU1nN0J1ZW8wVHdLcTV6eEs1dzQvYTlOL2p4ZGZUVlE4UFJw cWhvMXVZR09NaS9xZGNwaU9rdmxNMllJTEFKQVFMZXhlUGtNL256SGJUSW1SeUYh ZQ==?share_link_id=913759008257. I wish to expand and network with other artists in order to increase popularity and progress of the collective. This year I was initially inspired by the Vorticism and its bold, organic, carving-style abstraction to describe the energy of modern life and increasing industrialisation. Traditional, raw mediums to describe the new; something key to my interests. I recently gained membership within Edinburgh Printmakers via an intaglio workshop, where I create contemporary, communication themed etchings. I believe that it would be exciting to look into the ways in which we tend to personify and humanise aspects of science and technology to form a sense of integration rather than an external power. I am highly inspired by applying the emotional, human, to the static filled signals around us. The human finding its way in a confusing world of its own experimental creation. I believe, by studying a postgraduate degree, that these ideas can be critiqued, exhibited, expanded upon, and guided in a clear manner. I hope to improve my methods of creation to be become as effective and as communicative as possible.

Highly volatile bids for human control over nature and technology are straining our progress, they are pulling in opposite directions. Motivated via expression, these concepts can be weaved together to form sensory and experiential information through new ideas of our existence as a species. Existential realisation, of what it means to be human, a body (or the biological) is key here. It seems that only the mind itself sets us apart from our surroundings. The computational power and its categorisations. An AI then appears as a collective mind, a merging of our information. What if humans were to 'merge' as a collective through information much more efficiently (or instantly) through a secondary technology? What if this is entirely crafted via chemically altered organisms? What if this idea is applied to other organisms, biomes and abstract concepts such as language? How will the world change in its communication? I find these topics very interesting.

I have recently designed several bronze sculptures, as well as those with included wood carving/stone to be created prior to my MFA studies and/or during them.