Encase, Encompass, Encircle

A series of body-based, hand-painted, laminate wearables with hardware fastenings.

Materials – the more unconventional, the better! – and their capabilities have always fascinated me. I am constantly collecting a variety of materials – paper, plastic, recyclables, organic items – and adding them to my “textural library”.  My natural response to these materials is to push their boundaries and show their possibilities. When looking at an artwork, I enjoy the puzzle of deciphering what it is made from – I try to achieve this same effect in my work where possible.  I want people to nearly have to interact with my work before they figure out how it was made.
I aim to achieve this in some way with the laminated structures I have created in my studio. By laminating paper and materials, I have taken away their natural texture and replaced it with something foreign – plastic. Almost like placing a painting behind glass, I have removed the tactility of my materials, changing them completely and rendering them unrecognisable.
I have recently realised that I am extremely driven by process. As I have said, I think it is important to examine the potentials of materials. I like to test these potentials in a variety of traditional and alternative ways. How the materials react is my starting point for further investigation. 
The small, laminated structures I am currently working with were derived from a variety of processes and a lot of trial and error. I think it’s very important to make mistakes, record them and even learn from them. 
From my experiments of twisting, turning, stacking and layering plastics; I was left with some really interesting but simple three-dimensional structures. I have since tried to improve on each structure in a different way through a multitude of embellishment processes such as adding clasps, eyelets etc.                  
I have considered a number of outputs for the work I have created in studio. I thought about an installation piece, as many of the artists I have been looking at work in this way - I thought about hanging them from the ceiling or stacking them up on the floor. However, following the recent embellishments, such as the clasps and buttons, my natural reaction is to place them on my body almost like a piece of clothing. I want to explore these ideas of body adornment further through photography.