Growing up in South London, I always loved the way music would impose itself onto you. Being amplified through cars, homes, and people singing along to music. I was always tuned in to these overt expressions of love and enjoyment and I loved the way it was infectious. During my teens, I was a real culture chameleon and had friends within separate cultural groups. I started working in high street fashion retail, where the majority of my colleagues would listen to dance music such as house and boogie. Alongside this, I also started to get into skateboarding with some of my friends whom I had grown up with and at the time this came with it’s own music scene. At college, I had a different set of friends that I would go to drum & bass nights with. I would share a love of hip-hop and R&B through hanging out and going to parties with cousins and friends. The connecting factor in all of this is that most of the music I was finding out about was through social interaction and the contagious love for music people would share. It wasn’t until my early twenties, when I started to collect vinyl, that I started to listen and discover things alone, but I would always share this, either through trying to Dj or casually playing music to friends and family. Listening session is my all-time favourite thing! Talking about what you love about a particular track whilst it’s being played. It allows you to project an honest fluency.

Like most people who move away from the use of a particular medium, I found that I couldn’t convey my ideas through the medium. I became more interested in the entirety of a space over containing within a canvas and gradually begun working with installation. I also studied my BA at a time where Fine Art courses where mostly categorised as ‘Fine Art Painting, Printmaking or Sculpture’, although the work that I applied with was definitely painting. There was no expectation on the course to produce paintings. Painting of the three courses felt the most open to not being restricted to the medium, as there were a few people in my year that weren’t making paintings by the end of the course. However, through various things, I felt I was being influenced, being affected by culture outside of a “Fine Art” context. It wasn’t until I finished my postgraduate study that I began giving myself the permission to incorporate some of this.

Movement as a philosophy is something that I am very interested in, as it encompasses every area of life on earth and more (i.e. growth, ageing space, sound etc.). Shoes have been used within various mediums within my practice. Of course shoes are a signifier of movement, but I am also interested in how they can form a portrait. The detachment they have from the body replaces the human pulse/energy with objects, lucid material, light and sound in suggesting alternative figures and modes of motion.

For the residence, I had to produce a public facing event and there was a mixture of writers, musicians and artists. This meant that there was a mixture of events from readings, live music performances, etc. I screened a piece of work called “Untitled (Language Research)” from 2015 which showed the research behind a previous piece, “4minutes 6 of Conversation” 2014-ongoing. Within it, there’s a close look at non-linguistic languages through dance. Exploring where cultures collide, grow, merge and complicate. This 45min montage has had several works splinter off it, so I thought it would be a good starting point in discussing the different elements within my practice.

It allows me to lean into my work as being unfinished and ongoing, to research and be in continuous conversation. The introduction of the percussionist into an existing work always reconfigures it and in an exhibition, this permanently changes the work from what was originally presented. This is a way for me to explore my interest into when different cultural contact occurs and a new cultural expression emerges from it. I like this idea of things changing through contact and not coming from a linear trajectory.

I am interested in the relationship between the performer and the viewer. The performer is often concealed to remove expectations. In experimenting with performances where the viewer doesn’t have the privilege of being able to scrutinise the physicality of the performer and what that means within the context of a sound performance and their experiences.

This is mainly through the use of sound and rhythm. In more recent years, the incorporation of a live percussionist is used to draw closer to this. I’m often working towards pieces where the different aspects or materials co-exist on equal plain working together.

Rhythm is one, as this has something to do with timing in the context of giving the pre-recorded elements a live physical pulse. In terms of imagery, I often use color and photographs of fruit and vegetables in reference to movement in terms of imported food and plants found in other parts of the world from where they are commonly grown: its historical context, adaptation and influences. Drums are of course something I have continually returned to. I view this through the lens of every culture having there own version of this instrument and its various cultural uses. I often gravitate towards its bodily relation to the sound of the human heartbeat. Drawing upon its universal language and its use within collective experiences is something I like to explore and further understand.

I feel like it’s a term that does not give room for things being or growing out of more than one thing. It is often used as a term to compare and align, which I find can be deeply problematic. Particularly when these terms find themselves used within culture when they are used associatively. With this, I mean winners vs. losers, good vs. bad etc. What this looks like and where one sits in this constructed spectrum. The ways in which they are leaned on to be all encompassing, I find can be bleak. I prefer to explore how culture and cultural practices are normally birthed from two or more different cultural contacts. I try and put all these ideas to question within all the material elements of my practice. Using ready-made objects, archive and performance is more about my interaction with these things rather than my depiction and how this changes with new interactions and experiences. Influencing ideas and as a result, works are often revisited and new iterations created.

Keep an eye on my website, as I always try/keep these up to date with events and goings.