Here is an excerpt form the interview:
I was fortunate to be selected as one of the Australian artists to attend Unfixed. The scope and ambition for a residency focused on Disability and how the lived experience of disability creates a unique perspective on the arts was unlike anything that had occurred in Australia before and the opportunity to engage with ten other disabled artists from around Australia and the UK has had a significant impact on the way I think about the work I make and how I exhibited it.
I was then invited to take over the ANAT Instagram for #ANATsoapbox in 2020 at a time when I was experimenting with digital art and augmented reality as a way to both make my work more accessible and shift my audience from a passive viewer to active participant in the work.
Everybody’s a storyteller. What stories are you telling through your work?
I see my work not as telling stories but rather asking questions about the stories we tell ourselves. My work attempts to reflect how every individual perceives and experiences the world differently, how environmental structures, physical and social, shape our perceptions and in turn how we shape the world individually and collectively. I went through a very visceral change while studying at art school as I acquired a disability from a spinal injury and started using a wheelchair for mobility. Experiencing such a dramatic shift in how I engage with the world and how the world perceived me presented me with an opportunity to play with that fascination of difference in my work as a way to draw audiences into reflecting on themselves. I’ve continued to play with that notion of ‘otherness’ but always mixing in an element of questioning to create space for the audience to reflect on themselves and where they fit into the story.
