Introduction

As a fashion designer I became frustrated with the limitations of designing clothing around the standard female body and in 2008 I began to experiment with pattern cutting ‘garments’ that joined disparate objects together. The result was my first soft sculpture and a completely new direction for me creatively.

These ideas are concerned with the engraftment of fashion with furniture and also with an element of performance and the ‘wearing’ of the sculpture.

‘Ercol Easy Jodhpur’ 2008

I have a collaborative partnership named ‘Conjoin:me’ with Hedley Roberts in which we make work within our respective areas of interest but to some degree outside our normal practice.

To date we have produced sculptures and installation which we exhibited in Tokyo in 2009 and are preparing new ideas for a show in Malaysia in July 2010.

‘Sofadress1’ Conjoin:me 2009

Currently I have another branch of work based around paper folding which I developed on a recent month-long trip to Beijing to teach at Tsinghua University . The themes are similar to those of the soft sculptures, however the fractured, tessellated images, digitally printed onto paper have a more ephemeral appearance.

‘Peter and the Hutong Rugs’ 2010 (seen from right side)

‘Peter and the Hutong Rugs’ (seen from the left side)

Content-subject matter and conceptual position

I am currently concerned with themes from my childhood, the politics of the female body and the domestic environment. My work has been and will continue to be autobiographical visiting the physical, emotional and sensual landscape of my early life whilst incorporating elements of design, costume, sculpture and theatre.

My aim is to create assemblages that are a metaphor for my past, my present and my future. These will be totems to my survival of, boredom conflict, family life and a new understanding of my creativity.