Tell us about your creative process, what drives your practice?

My practice is partly driven by my body and its environment. Playing and engaging with embodiment and relaying that through print mediums and through paper. Paper and print is so exciting as the possibilities are really endless. Experimenting and using my body are real drivers in my practice and two things that you really can’t fail at. They are always the starting point from which I work outwards. The other huge driver in my practice is maintaining a healthy appetite for learning. I’m always trying to read, watch, and listen to as much as I can. Absorbing everything that interests me as a way to take inspiration.

In your explorations of gendered gaze, you (really interestingly) engage with notions of absence and presence. What draws you to experiment with this duality?

Oftentimes I have felt disconnected from my body and the heavyweight of a deep-rooted misogynistic culture over my form and all-female forms, particularly in art. Living in a patriarchal society, bodies perceived as female are often used as vessels, seen as ‘purposeful’. I wanted to experiment with the idea of existence, presence and absence as a way of subverting the notion of usefulness. Sexual violence in particular drives this duality. It is both being used and being empty. I work under the philosophy that our bodies serve to exist. Our mere existence seems to be political and it is for this reason that I experiment with the notion of absence and presence through paper.

Paper seems to be an integral material in your multidisciplinary practice, and is often used in multiple stages of your process. So, why paper?

Paper offers a really unique quality when crushed or squashed, it is so clear what was there. It serves as a memory. As a way of mark making it allows me to represent myself in an interesting, unique way. It started as a fear of the blank piece of paper, that dreaded sight. I wanted to break through the fear that all artists I’m sure face at some point and ended up loving the possibilities of the blank sheet. Paper that has the imprint of a body, a rip, tear, crease offers a narrative, there is so much in the absence. I am endlessly excited by the possibilities that paper offers for performance, print, and sculpture.

Are there any female printmakers | artists that influence you?

There are so many printmakers that influence me and obviously too many to name. The ones that hit at the top of the list are the ones in our Canberra printmaking community. Alison Alder is an incredible influence and I was hugely lucky to be taught by her at the ANU School of Art and Design. Her incredible activism and political works are a great deal of influence in my own work. Her works just hit you, they are insightful and powerful. Her posters in particular share such bold feminism. The amazing printmakers at Megalo serve as endless wells of knowledge and who share their knowledge so generously. I have to say however, I get most influence from the female, female identifying and non binary powerhouses I see everywhere.

Finally, what exciting projects are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently working on a project at the moment that moves across screen-printing and sculpture. I’m really excited to be able to experiment with using print works as sculpture and how paper is able to take different forms. I, along with many others I’m sure have spent much time inside their home yet for someone with anxiety this poses all kinds of dangers and challenges to say the least. The work will deal with the fear of the outside, the home and our relationship with the spaces we inhabit.