My memories of growing up in post-apartheid South Africa serve as a starting point for my project. Iconic buildings like The Carlton Hotel, Johannesburg formed the basis of my initial research. During the unrest of the 1980s, a series of bombings caused the Carlton to close its doors and it has remained empty ever since. Informed by the works of Peter Doig and Marc Chagall’s dream-like narrative art, I am fascinated with the tradition of storytelling and the power it has to link the past with the present by evoking a sensory union of image with imagination to interpret the world. I use a combination of memory, photos, borrowed images and collage to embrace mood and perception over reality, to capture an uneasy sense of atmosphere or place - essentially, a place that exists on the edges of our perception - there but not there.
Biography
Although I am British born, I grew up on a remote farm outside Johannesburg when my parents emigrated there in the 1970s. In recent years I’ve lived in Myanmar and Pakistan before settling in Perth, Scotland. I’ve enjoyed a successful career, completed a degree through distance learning with the University of South Africa (UNISA), but it has always been my lifelong ambition to study Fine Art full time and I am thrilled that after completing my foundation studies with Leith School of Art, I will head on to Newcastle University.
