Artist Residency France 2013

In 2013 I undertook an artist residency in rural France, in a region called Bordeneuve, located in the Ariège department of France in the village of Betchat, 70km from Toulouse and near the Spanish border. Here, I created a body of work based on limitation and the found object. I had no car, no art shop and no familiar ground. Having to use my limited palette of paints, materials and resources to create art was challenging, yet soon this experience manifested into a positive one. I relied on what I could access while staying on the property. My works from this experience express my journey and travels around France.

I created small works which for me resonate visual diaries about travel, boarders, globalisation movement, connections, limitations language and culture. These intimate small abstracted compositions are authentic and include collected objects during my travels in France such as tickets, coins dockets/ receipts, plane tickets.

During the residency, I created an installation incorporating remnant fabrics and string, in which I wrapped a piano stool, situated in my room. The process of wrapping became a part of my art making as it planted an exotic silence in the space that I inhibited which hinged on the mediative. I almost felt stranded in this remote 17th Century farmhouse. I had no car or public transport and required a fair few kilometres of walking to reach the main town. The idea of being bound, grounded, tied was rather an experience. This wrapped stool correlates with each portion of the fabric that is wrapped meticulously around the "piano stool" symbolising a form of escape yet striving to achieve harmony both in psyche and in the plenitude of the artwork.

The experience of making is about layering and forming compositions to derive at a visual language of self-expression and even inner self-portraiture.

I take great pleasure to experiment with the everyday materials or the 'found' object incorporating humble materials in my work used as a vehicle to express my essence.