Biography
Through sculpture and installation, I explore the myriad entanglements between humans and other species. Looking for alternatives to an anthropocentric worldview, I ask questions through my work such as: ‘what do bacteria and fungi think of human exceptionalism?’ and ‘Could dairy cows be considered workers?’
The Pelts are a series of sculptures made from recycled hi-vis workwear reconfigured in the shape and size of a cowhide. These unsettling forms function as human/ cow hybrids, splashed with tarmac from their past life. Do Animals Work? is an essay by ethologist Vinciane Despret, whose argument for dairy cows as workers influenced this series that explores human and animal labour and visibility.
I process milk from a liquid into a sculptural material, pushing the limits of what is possible with this material, whilst interrogating the many narratives (of nourishment and disease, mass production and cross species intimacy) that milk engenders. Regular work with a microscope forms part of my studio practice, as a way of thinking through our enmeshed existence with other, less visible, life forms such as the cheese fungi that sometimes colonise my milk sculptures. In her book Lovebug, which examines cross species contaminations, Daisy Lafarge comments that ‘no species is an island’. My work explores these interconnections and their potentialities – both benign and threatening.