I used to consider myself a writer, especially when I was younger. Writing was a way of processing my experiences and sometimes I like to explore an artwork further by ‘writing it out’. These works often reference the darker corners of my mind, my fears and my deeper feelings around being a woman.

This work explores my personal feelings about existing in an increasingly chaotic world and the need to rise above the narrative in order to maintain hope. It represents the tension between disorder and ascension, held by the egret, a totem animal chosen for its ability to attune to its environment by way of trusted instincts and quiet observation. The bird anchors this piece, not from the earth, but from above, asking the question, “Where do we locate hope?”

Regardless of our spiritual, cultural or political ideations, how do we find purpose and perspective without engaging with a higher power or a higher mind?

She had always felt that there was a universe inside of her.

Before the schedules and to do lists filled her diary she was acutely aware of the enormity of what she was holding. She knew she was in here; her skin barely keeping it all in. She felt the taut expanse of her dreams, her urgent philosophy and her righteous sense of place within this vast maternal macrocosm. She engaged in deep conversation with herself while she did the dishes, promising herself she would compress it all down into small parcels, neatly wrapped and hidden, like colourful birthday presents saved for her big day.

After a few years of this winnowing, future versions of herself lay strewn around the house, untidy and unmade, like her children’s beds. She was the only one that saw these small, ill-conceived ghosts and they sometimes startled her when she was shoving loosely folded washing into musty dark cupboards. She was often surprised to find parts of herself that she had forgotten all about, wishes wedged between hand towels and flannelette sheets.

One day she was a universe and the next day she felt more like a black hole.

You might think that this gradual diminishing would be alarming, but the truth was that she didn’t know a single woman that didn’t disappear in some way or another. Women that disappeared into disordered eating, making themselves so small they was barely there or so large they felt safer, invisible in their ‘skindom’ of She. Ambitious young women that disappeared into work or weights or entitled young men who spoke of them in past tense. Whether she disappeared when she was young or old or mothering or working, at some point, she either made herself smaller or she disappeared all together.

After a time, she began to try and gather up this sticky mess of her life and put it back together. This urge to reassemble her parts usually began when life was hard and her desperate attempt to round it all up made it all the harder. She was trying to find the jam when the jar was empty. She looked in the mirror after her shower and her reflection was smeared across the surface, her edges were all gone.

In this intimate space, the steam made her body feel sticky and foreign to her and she looked away, her gaze falling on her underwear that was strewn on the wet floor.

Where did she go?

Where did she go? 2024

Raw porcelain

That he once,

Held her name in his mouth,

Like the first bite of a peach,

Soft and sweet, like hope or decay.

And later, his open hand upon her belly,

Safe. In that moment, she thought.

Unsafe. Was her last.

That truth caught her breath like a fish on a pole,

In his tight fist.

That she left that night.

Tangled in the soft restraint of her nightgown.

A tainted shroud that swaddled her corpus quiet.

Her name still held within his mouth.

Speak Her Name 2025

Raw porcelain