01 / First thoughts….

03/10/22

I want to approach this project continuing from my line of thought last year, exploring the relationship between human and non-human. Especially taking inspiration from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception: that the experience of perception is interactive, participatory, and a reciprocal interplay between the perceiver and the perceived. And that our spontaneous, pre-conceptual experience yields no evidence for a division between animate and ‘inanimate’ phenomena.

Therefore, as summed up by anthropologist David Abram, ‘If perception, in its depths, is wholly participatory, how could we ever have broken out of those depths into the inert and determinate world we now commonly perceive?’

In terms of my practice, I’d like to emphasise this visually. But rather than focusing on ‘a lost language’ (between human/non-human) and focusing on the disconnect in a melancholy romanticist way – I want to highlight this profound interconnectedness and liveness of phenomena that is omnipresent through a homely, earthy, intimate, celebratory way.

I think continuing working with both painting and sculpture works well as they’re an example of animate, expressive matter in dialogue with each other.

However I want to steer away from the ‘whiteness’ and cool tone colour palette of my work, as I feel there is something, slightly clinical, post-modern, and detached about it. So this year I want to embrace more earthy tones and natural/raw materials – as this would be a better representation of my subject matter.