I am a multi-media artist primarly working in performance, installation and film.
As a young child I had been fascinated with glamorous or dangerous women, often praying to God asking that when I next awake it would be as a princess or sexy femme fatale. This innate fascination manifested itself in constant drawings and doodles (and dressing up as) the female archetypes I was enamoured by in books, cartoons, fairy stories, and popular culture. My love of Lara Croft (femme fatale), Rapunzal (princess) The Little Mermaid (mermaid) amongst others, were the original muses and catalysts for my desire to create. I began to dream of being a great artist.
As I hid away my dressing up upon entering school, my paintings developed into depictions of wild, bold, sexually emancipated goddesses and nudes, some amused friends interpreting them as teenage boy fantasies, believing that I fancied the naked women I depicted (rather, I wanted to be the naked woman). In the wake of John Berger's condemnation of the female nude in painting having permeated contemporary art discourse, I received harsh criticism of my subject matter as sexist, objectifying, and not edgy by my foundation teachers. Feeling misunderstood about something I felt passion and intensity for, I turned from painting to using my own self in my work in an effort to boldly articulate my personal stance and unrecognised visual language. Posturing my body and using costume in photographs and performances, I attempted to make the distinction between what they saw as sexual objectification, and what I saw as idolisation and identification; an alternate and queer relationship with the female icon that was little explored, a worship of the diva, and a nuanced appreciation for and aestheticisation of character flaw, ageing, humour, camp and female sexuality in art as a symbol of rebellion, viewed in a gaze refracted ratherthan direct. Additionally, to at that time distinguish my work from being interpreted as the creations of a traditional, heterosexual male gaze.
My early contemporary work, often photographic, maintained reference to my core inspiration, but only adjacently- the passions I had veiled in diplomacy, to help me navigate through a landscape I felt alienated from and misconstrued in. Something in this early usage of my identity, face and body felt not quite right or there however: tenuous, unrobust- not yet linked or consolidated. My new university tutor took me aback likening my paintings to self portraits, and the way I presented myself in photos and performances as similar to them. With the investment of a blonde wig one day just by fancy in passing it by, thinking "what a fun and lovely prop!", I put it on, adding some makeup for amusement. Suddenly, in what felt like a strangely purposeful accident, I realised -- I have, and I can, become her. The new possibilities for creation were magical and endless. I had found the inspiration, the muse, that unified all of my artistic interests and drives, bringing them to life, becoming as vivid as ever in the new mediums I endeavoured into in this contemporary landscape I once found difficult to traverse-- she was my conceptual armour, one apparent all along. This slow evolution into becoming her like black and white into technicolor, or my fantasy doodles into flesh through costume, film and performance - more immersive and liberating mediums than before- meant I could fully express the magical and surreal position with which I experience "the woman". I could combine visuals, the female icon on screen moving, and music- a filmic motif I had loved in any movie I could see that did such a thing, like Barb Wire starring Pamela Anderson, and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill- the avant garde showgirls of Flashdance capering to an 80s soundtrack, or the melodramatic, romantic, figurative music videos of Kate Bush and Madonna.
My work since has mainly been in the realms of performance and film, which I find to be the most communicative, alive and surreal ways of expressing my ideas. Within them I use storytelling and narrative through the body and facial expressions, juxtapositions with music, and immersion, in which I began to spend long periods of time as the woman, causing a strange symbiosis to form: a blurring of art and life (if there ever was a line), and it is me.
Living out my primary muse in this way, I have on a separate expedition begun to explore further and map out the meaning and implications of my compulsion for the feminine in psychological, sociological, psychoanalytic, and scientific fields. Drawing on my own feelings, I notice the uncanny similarity between myself and many other gay men and transgender persons: a strange and currently ambiguous link that forms in some of us between our own sexuality and an identification with exaggerated, hyper-feminine, sometimes tragic females (or strong survivors and fighters) and certain divas throughout history, such as Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Cher, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. This has lead me to investigate with more nuance and detail traditionally held notions on gender construction, and the possibility of the innate and certain artifices (such as for me, glamour) as a language understood and formatted in the unconscious. Moving away from art theory and delving more into realms of psychology, anthropology and discovery of other cultures, I seek to, if not uncover, better understand the psycho-social mechanisms at work here, operating mysteriously beneath our tangible world.
After much struggle in being questioned and challenged over my work's celebration of the glamorous woman, and being advised to prioritise analysis, referentialism, and the intellect in art-making in a way I perceived to be superficial and contrived (where it is popular to deconstruct and be cynical, and not be analytical about the inner), I eventually found and forged my position as an aestheticist, championing the long forgotten sublime, beauty (or monstrous beauty) and the spirit - the emotionality of the image - making work because I am moved by it or feel it - and trying to highlight the importance of an image or of adoring the image removed from conceptual mechanisms as not superficial, but a vital coded communicator to the psyche, revealing the cultural, psychological, political and spiritual facets within us through our tastes and sensibilities (in a way, forming a new conceptualism: conceptually validating the aesthetic where once conceptualism disregarded it, and letting it exist at ease with conceptualism). Pursuing my visions and inspirations, simultaneously examining the meanings and motivations behind these faithful endeavours.
Facing resistance and the treatment of decadence, beauty, glamour, sexy women, emotion, intuition and passion in art as frivolous, naive and unfashionable, and looked upon with suspicion and as perhaps machivellion by modernism, has helped me configure my position with both further confidence, self-questioning, and interrogation of theory, embedding within the images/imageries I create as a proposition to debate the pressuposed theories and opinions regarded as fundamentals that permeate contemporary philosophies and discourses (that art must must think and function for a certain cause) - that treat the sexy or glamorous woman as either unserious or bad, as reinforcing the patriarchy and as a patriarchal construct, notions that are inconsistent and disregarding of the preferences of many transgender people, and also women. The idea that the female domain of beauty, adornment and fashion has much to do now with patriarchy or male power is outdated-- it is a feminine energy and style, that has been naturally appropriated (or perhaps, reclaimed) from brutish hands that may have once monopolised it. My discovery of Candy Darling, a transsexual Warhol superstar has given me comfort in my experiences of sexuality and artifices as interlinked. Audiences often look upon my work fondly and whimsically, perhaps with a sense of irony and seeing me(/her) in "speech marks", which to some could be felt as patronising, but rather, I see it as our ability to reintroduce positive values we have had to temporarily turn away from; returning to them and handling them in a new way more removed from the homogonised and cynical beauty andstandards of beauty in marketing, and perhaps idealistically subverting it into celebration of variety, unconventionality, individuality and conventionality- of life and humans (the various unconventional portraits by Egon Schiele and loving depictions of various stages of life by Gustav Klimt for example). In this sense, perhaps it was necessary to turn away from beauty, glamour, and sexy women: so that we could return to them in and restore their existence in culture in a more huamne and thoughtful way.
Simultaneously rebelling and expressing my personal position via the aesthetic and context, has brought me a new understanding and appreciation of my work by contemporary audiences.
The desire and intention of my work is usually to create the sublime or an aspiration to the sublime- a feeling of unexplaineble magic or inspiration that is felt- to recreate the feeling I feel for the things that have inspired me and the muse that has touched me: the power of the look, beauty, aesthetics and affect, which I have intended to revitalise, while examining its possible dangers for misuse, as demonstrated in the past due to its potency, ambivalence and abstract interlink with our humanity.
I currently make art in East and South London, and am a recent graduate of the Chelsea College Of Art & Design.