“Rocks give me a sense of permanence in a rapidly fading world”.

Stones whisper stories from the past. Their language travels through touch, smell, sound and their embedded memories.

When cleaving or cutting stone, I’m never sure what I might find.  Fossils and knots of mica reveal themselves amidst iridescent streaks harbouring deep time secrets.  Their unique characteristics and narratives, be they geological or cultural, allow me to create layers of meaning in a work.  

I work with a diverse mixture of materials –porcelain, smalti, gold, bitumen and rocks.  Using redundant building materials such as old slate tile off-cuts and salvaged marble tiles doomed for landfill is also about re-defining what we value.  In a world where extractive capitalism is exhausting the planet’s resources.

My work speaks to our rapidly disappearing planet due to the climate crisis, land clearing and human greed, exacerbated by the rise of the ultra-far right.  In the last 40 years, more than half of the world’s wildlife has gone.  Australia has the highest extinction rate of mammals in the world. In the region where I live and work, increasing numbers of species are being added to the endangered list.  My artworks are personal reflections on these unfolding crises.

When making, I seem to do this dance between despair, grief at what’s been lost and destroyed, fear, and hope.  Mosaic, involves repetition of processes and as a slow art form, allows me to digest, reflect and ride through this emotional tangle.  It allows me to make sense of the senseless.  My work is an expression of that dance.  Above all, what I hope viewers can see, is my absolute love for the natural world. 

In my work, I attempt to push the physical and conceptual possibilities of the mosaic art form.  The temporary loss of nearly two thirds of my eyesight was a watershed moment and led to greater experimentation in my laying techniques.  In relying on touch and following what my hands were thinking and feeling, I have developed angled laying techniques, particularly with slate and porcelain, that enhance the play of light across a mosaic surface.

Movement, undulations and repetition in my sculptural works is heightened by the day’s shifting light.  The layers of slate tesserae create encroaching shadows of absence, suggestive of the increasing numbers of animals, plants and insects that are becoming extinct due to the climate crisis.  Supplemented by the layers of air captured between each hand cut tesserae that creates a softness, particularly when viewed distally. Listening to materials, learning what I can do with them, problem solving, and taking risks underpin my efforts to create my own visual language.