He/Him
My artwork has always been about myself and all things that may be more difficult to translate conventionally. In my schooling years I found it difficult to absorb information unless it was visual and constantly had to take part in extra curricular sources available to succeed academically. The only space in my life where I felt secure was when I was making art, however due to my difficulties in art class I would sometimes clash with the use of authority over my passion towards where I wanted to take my art practice. This lead to me developing an “anti art” bias which I use in my work today – I would paint in oil paint at school and spray paint on walls after school, almost always in my uniform.
It wasn’t until university that I was introduced to the idea of hierarchy in art. To someone like me, this embedded hierarchy threatened my dreams of becoming an artist. It was almost as if I realised I would have to conform to my old classroom “rules” to make it. For a while my focus from this was on the art industry and I made artwork to critique and make fun of it, using irony and my preferred style of art, “neo expressionism”, which was a movement I admired for its similar response to the same circumstances.
My final year degree show was an attempt to directly confront the reason I feel threatened by this “unfair industry”, which was “failing at becoming the greatest artist that ever lived and will live”. What I started to understand through the process of creating artwork with this in mind, is a lack of self-belief is more dangerous than a hierarchy in art. I was trapped in a loop of making artwork that I really like and down-playing its value, all because I didn’t want to make a “fool of myself” if ever I was wrong in how great I thought I was.
In my degree show I attempt to flaunt my artwork without underplaying its value to me. I also felt it was necessary to encrypt the double-edged sword of hiding something powerful like a dream to protect it, all the while suffocating its potential to come true in the narrative of my exhibition.
In early February of 2025, I decided to bring my monkeys to life using ceramic, as the material would be challenging, yet mirror the fragile nature of the narrative of “dreaming to be an artist”. After over three months of planning and making monkeys, I was able to come out with fifteen monkeys I was pleased with.
The monkey has been a part of my life ever since I was two years old, when my dad was gifted a monkey teddy bear which I claimed as my own, and still keep with me today. As a child, my ears would stick out and I was referred to as a monkey quite a lot, only broadening my attachment to them.
Making these sculptures revitalised that dream of being an artist and embodied different characteristics I hold dear to myself. I made a further three monkeys which were part of the exhibition but were hidden within and around my exhibition space. One was a gold flake plated monkey hidden behind a curtain to symbolise the beautiful yet fragile childhood dream of being the best artist who ever lived, and how agonising it is to declare as my plan for the future, due to how ambitious it may seem.
The initial stages, such as the 3D CAD design, were like my first ideas of being an artist, or whoever I wanted to be when I was a child – an uncharted area at the time, but complete freedom of design.
I then slip-cast them, where the idea becomes more real but still malleable and tangible. After this there are vulnerable stages of firing in ceramics which I compare to asking for feedback on work you believe in, and not knowing the outcome. Once the monkeys were glazed and finalised it was unsettling because they were so fragile, and after putting so much time into them, they will be put out into the world and judged.
Just like putting the dream of becoming an artist in to the world.
Each of my monkeys will be for sale and/or available for exhibitions after my Degree Show has ended. Please feel free to contact me via email, Instagram or telephone to collaborate and/or inquire about them. I also plan to make many more and keep expanding my exploration in sculpture and ceramics.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE MONKEY THROUGHOUT MY DIGITAL ART
I use my digital art as a means to refine an idea, I find that a characterisation and customisation of a figure can be easily imagined and changed when creating digitally. These are some of many examples over numerous years of how the most up to date monkey (top) has changed drastically to the first ever digital sketch of my monkeys (very bottom) to equate to the physical form it became.
An extra curricular activity that I feel was important towards the final outcomes of my university experience, was “The Gentrification Project” and its relation to “Free Art Mondays”, which was where I gave away free art every Monday over six months. The artwork itself was a result of a refined “print, draw and repeat” practice with images from my personal sketchbook and digital work collaged using a photocopier to create busy themed pieces with a focus on composition and colour.
The idea of giving these works away was to not only give those who may not have the opportunity to own art to have some, but was mainly to build a confidence for myself as an artist through a steady inclined demand and support, because of this weekly ritual. I liked the idea because it was similar to graffiti in a way, where I would put my art in public and watch over as some stopped to look, picked it up for a closer look or in its unique way, took it home with them.
These are some examples of artwork which varied between A4 and A3 prints and were in frames from charity shops.
