Following a number of conversations about mental health, I started to wonder about the human mind, and how/where that might be located, which lead to trying to visualise that space.

Drawing from the collection of people with whom I have worked (including myself), Specimens explores how our physical heads can merge, mutate and interfere with each other. In doing so they create space for our imaginations to engage in multiple readings, akin to how the abstractions of Rorschach diagrams are interpreted differently by each viewer depending on their own psychological experiences.

Think Tsantsa combined with Rorschach, but digital.

October 2022 – Specimen 07 wins the Nottingham Trent University x Vieunit 2022 Art Prize.

Quote from Benedict Carpenter van Barthold, Principal Lecturer in Fine Art at NTU, part of the judging panel: The first prize is awarded to a time-based digital work that deals with the entanglement of technology, human perception, and nature. In this richly evocative work, the leaf-covered Green Man of mediaeval worship appears in forms that recall cutting-edge medical imaging, only to give way to other forms of life and landscape. It is as though a history of the mind has been folded out to form a digital undergrowth from which other forms emerge. In this way, the work seems to deal with what is sometimes called “thick-time”, an embodied layering of the past, the present and the future, as modern technology, the natural world, the mind, and the body become entwined. The judging panel were impressed by the intensity of experiencing this work, as well as by the pressingly contemporary nature of the themes and manner of execution.

Specimen 06/RBRBDS

Specimen 08/RTMMPMRI

Specimen 07/VCKMWS

Specimen 09/JAVCPS

anatomy Body collaboration confused Dr Caligari Dr Caligari's cabinet drugs ephemeral exploration flesh geography human intimacy ireland looking mapping painting recovery scrutiny self-portrait shrunken heads Specimen specimens surreal terrain textures topology tribal Tzantza witness