Sculptures from 10x10x10cm to 20x20x80cm, standing on empty wet wipe boxes, 2024
These sculptures are made from wet wipes, disposable contact lenses and their cases, ear plugs, blu tack, my daughter’s hair clips, stickers and other material from my daily life. These really are the ‘remains’ that Linda Goode-Bryant and Marcy S. Philips talk about in their 1978 essay ‘Contextures’; materials left over from some event, and charged with the energy of that connection. I’m particularly interested in materials that make contact with the body. Contact lenses and wet wipes touch us and then we throw them away, but they retain something of that touch.
The sculptures were made over a long period, the full three years since our first daughter was born. I kept thinking I needed to come back to them to ‘finish them’, or that they were somehow sketches for the ‘real’ works that I’d make when I had more time. Then it came to the exhibition and it turned out that these were all I had. I’m glad really. They’ve retained their provisional, partial quality and held on to all that energy.