1.In your practice you make a lot of reference to folklore and mythology, and there are some interesting elements of apocrypha-mysticism too. There is also a mischievous and comic touch to your work. Can you discuss some societal impacts of Occult ideologies having been absorbed and transmogrified by popular culture?
My practice isn’t influenced by The Occult but rather power structures and our own personal realities. More specifically what I perceive as the warped and toxic approach that Capitalist ideology has towards progress and success, and how this acts to inform our perception of morality.
2.What are some things or rituals that you find essential to your day to day art practice
I try to space my practice between making and learning (reading stuff, watching stuff, listening to stuff), although I have interests that are a constant through my day to day I find it important to make boundaries between different aspects of my life, art practice, part time job, personal life/interests. I guess a ritual would be redefining and readjusting what these boundaries are.
The aesthetic of my work is very much inspired by the things that I have always collected and absorbed myself in. A lot of the stuff I refer back to are things I’ve had since childhood, comics, figures, films etc so there’s definitely a personal nostalgia there. I’ve also always been interested in how once these worlds and characters are created they inhabit an existence of their own constantly being reimagined and retold. I like the idea that the individual authorship and ownership of characters then becomes less important than the stories being told.
4.Regarding your 'Technotrash' performance at Holden Gallery last year, you delve into the idea of personal realities in the age of post truth, people configured to act counterintuitively to collective betterment of society. Can you make sense of why so many still seem to be enticed by such a fallacy?
Currently my view is that The Government, The State, The Media, Big Business etc have always spread misinformation, lied to and victimised much of society. This inevitably leads to a justifiable distrust of these institutions, this distrust mixed with the fallacies (i.e fear of ‘the other’) that have been soaked into society by the systems mentioned before is then manipulated and stoked by a select few for personal gain.
5.Some insight into what you have planned for the near future?
For the passed 12 months Ive been working on a new body of work that will be exhibited at the end of this year between Castlefield Gallery, Manchester and IMT Gallery, London.
