Artist's Statement
Photography and photomontage play a key role in my influences as a jewellery artist. Inspired by the surrealist artists of the early 20th century, I aim to capture a similar play between reality and illusion. Photographing the cityscapes that surround me, my intention is to evoke a sense of the city, which is at times overwhelming; streets laced with buildings and signs, roads studded with lights, amongst a mass of moving people and traffic. Simultaneously this urban landscape can sometimes seem like the most deserted and lonely of places.Through the inclusion of self-portraiture I suggest a universal idea of human experience, the movement of the body mapping out a sign language to our thoughts and emotions, which unlike the bombardment of words and signs in the city, has no written meaning, yet seems so powerful. I aim to engage an audience through the interactive qualities to my jewellery which beg to be looked through, tilted and examined closely. Like a photographic transparency held to the light or a window illuminated in the night time, I feel my jewellery provides a visual gateway into another life, a fragment of information which leads our imagination to create narratives around that mystery.