I have a long standing enjoyment in photography, particularly organised photoshoots. I have also always been a big fan of Claude Cahun’s photography work and consider them to be one of my biggest idols, I took these photos using an FM2 film camera in homage to Cahun. These are photographs of the negatives taken on my phone, which were then inverted, I find these images to be quite valuable, the inclusion of the film border gives a real physicality to the work and brings the attention to the process of partaking in a photoshoot rather than the subject itself. I definitely plan to make some adjustments to some of these, maybe bring in some colour and contrast. This whole process felt very therapeutic, to become an image of one of my idols and transform my mindset into that of them, looking back on the outcome, I understand it to have been somewhat transformative.

Though not visible in these photos taken of the negatives, on the wall behind me are the words ‘I am untrained’ mirroring Cahun’s famous expression ‘I am in training, don’t kiss me’. These words, as you will see, become more visible once exposed onto photographic paper.  To me, being so called ‘untrained’ is symbolic of my want for knowledge and full acceptance within myself  and society, it’s about my exploration into topics of gender identity and how I’ve barely scratched the surface of this broad and diverse topic.

The following painting is a self portrait that was done in a rushed moment of feeling the urge to paint something but not feeling in the mood to paint my usual style. I feel like it captures a certain sad essence about myself. It’s not a super skilled painting or anything but I had fun in the process so I like it.

When I first began using repurposed cardboard boxes as a canvas, it was because I liked the accessibility of it and I liked the feeling of a painting being an object with blemishes and tears and without straight edges compared to a two dimensional item. My attention towards the physicality of cardboard is still prevalent to this day, but my attention diverted slightly when I found an old wine box and took it apart to create a net of the original object, I really liked this idea of repurposing something that was done being used and turning it into a shape slightly more indecipherable than its original form. Similar to Robert Rauschenberg’s work with found cardboard, I became obsessed with the strength in such a fragile material and I really liked the idea of giving it a new lease of life.

Below are a few paintings that I made when beginning this exploration into nets. The first work titled ‘Earth Turns To You’ came from a particularly tough place, I was in a serious art block and this was made worse by the Ukraine crisis that is still ongoing, the idea of doing any of my regular work felt almost insensitive or shallow in comparison to the humanitarian crisis happening overseas. I found that a lot of my mindset when painting that was with Ukraine and the struggles of any war and my inability to comprehend why somebody would commit such atrocities. Despite this piece of work being somewhat off topic from the rest of my work, it felt relevant in regards to feigning optimism in a crisis, and it also paved way to a new era of abstract work for me, with more distinctive contrasts between colour and an overall more ‘clean’ look.