Experiences shape our internal landscape, what we believe, and what we value. My childhood landscape was one of adversity, my formative experiences full of compromise. I cultivated my way of being using creativity as the means for personal growth and the foundation for sharing experience.
My journey as an artist began in earnest when I started working alongside pioneers of psychedelic installationsfor the early rave scene. Awakened to the possibility that reality can be perceived in many ways, I realised that the mind, and therefore the person, is malleable, a material that can be shaped. Unfortunately, the predatory nature of agenda-driven ideologies and those in power do not always have our wider interests at heart. I saw in this phase how art could empower an audience seeking self-driven inner exploration.
My interest in human psychology, philosophy and AI led to collaboration with academics investigating the brain. At the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, a neurology research unit in Oxford, I researched what makes humans flourish. I am an ongoing proponent of science-led ‘body-hacking’ as a means to optimise wellbeing. I am less convinced by the potential for AI to replace key aspects of the artistic process. Creativity is the primary driver of human culture. My experience as both maker and teacher is that creative practice promotes both spiritual and personal growth, not something I would willingly hand over to a computer programme.
I seek to subvert restrictive frameworks, revealing how these inevitably limit understanding of identity and those considered to be ‘other’. I constantly challenge my own conditioning in my drive to free my thinking and be a more authentic, connected human being. I want to question existing authority without necessarily wanting to overthrow it. Through performance I seek to subvert the imposition of norms, revealing latent energies that tap into our collective subconscious, the intuitive, and the ferox that comes from our animal nature.
The Human Animal some reflections on my work.