-As a child what did you want to become (profession-wise)?
I always wanted to be an artist.
-In which town did you grow up? In Brentwood, Essex.
-Do you think your background influences your current artistic style?
Not my background as such, but one of my earliest memories is of seeing what I remember to be a real “sleeping beauty” and being utterly entranced/horrified. I think it must have been a mummy in a museum, but I often think that that experience made a huge impact on me. And that perhaps I am always trying to recreate a similar impact with my sculptures.
-What inspires you in the job of being an artist?
It is hard to specify one thing, but I visit a lot of museums, visit historical buildings, and travel a lot. I am very interested in learning about different religions, rituals and superstitions and often find inspiration there. Similarly, however, I am very interested in technology and how it mediates our relationships and notion of ourselves. I also find scanning technologies incredibly fascinating, and I love learning how they work and mastering software to view scans. After completing an MPhil at the RCA (the Royal College of Art) – where my subject matter was the use of medical imaging to create artworks -- I made the conscious decision to let my ideas evolve more organically and to allow different influences into a piece of work. I read a quote from Alise Iborg (of Second Front, an online performance group) where she proposed that “meaning-making” comes from “a back and forth exchange in which ideas migrate by osmosis” between the real and the virtual. I see the evolution of an idea like the game Tetris – different influences are like the different shaped blocks, and you never know which shape or influence is going to fall from the sky and complete the line/idea for a piece of work.
-Do you have any other creative ambitions or dreams to which you aspire?
I’d really love to get involved in some dance / interactive performances.
-Which basic elements of creativity did your family teach you?
My father renovated a 14th Century timber-framed house when I was a child and was always making or fixing something. I think I inherited a passion and pleasure for making and busying myself.
-How did you get the idea for making this type of art?
It evolved from my first sculpture, I Know You Inside Out, where I downloaded scans of the Visible Human Project and printed them onto sheets of clear acrylic. I wanted to expose the technology and try to sentimentalize it. From then on, I have been following the lead of the technology.
-Do you have a favorite artist?
There are many, but I particularly admire Yves Netzhammer for the way he sensitively deals with technology and Ernesto Neto for the way he approaches materiality.
-Are you ever afraid you will run out of inspiration and creativity in your job?
No.
-What is the most difficult thing in your job? I am very isolated most of the time, which is necessary to make the work, but at times I wonder if I am completely crazy spending so much time and energy making things that nobody cares about (and why should they care about them?). I often ask myself why I am making such labor-intensive objects, but if I stop, I get depressed and frustrated.