Artist's Statement:

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I have always been drawn to exploring themes of a cyclical nature in my practice. This has led me to discover the paradoxical nature of revolution—a term that exists in tension with itself. It simultaneously implies circularity, return, rupture and transformation. The inherent contradiction within the dichotomy between ‘to revolve’ and ‘to revolt’  underpins much of my thinking. It is a dialectic that is revealed not only in history and language, but viscerally through the body. In my work, the body becomes a vessel through which metaphysical, ontological, temporal and political reasoning are both willingly embraced and fundamentally resisted.

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To revolve is to return - to cycle through a determined path, to orbit, to return. It is the revolutions of a wheel, the orbit of the planets, the ticking of the hands on a clock. To revolt is to rupture - to subvert the repetition, to lacerate the orbit, to reveal a new trajectory. This overlapping and intertwined coexistence suggests a deeper existential question: are we bound to repeat, or are we free to change? What would we become if this temporal cycle ceased to exist, and we escaped its centrifugal force? What if the perpetual motion finally stopped? In my work, I aim to create a corporeal locus where this question is made visible. The figures I depict are frozen in a swirling motion, entangled with one another and time itself. They are both rising and falling, bound and escaping.

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I am drawn to the philosophical dimensions here. This contradiction reveals the possibility that something can have opposing aspects and yet achieve harmony. Contradiction is not inherently dissonant but can, instead, produce a deeper unity which is crucial to human nature. The figures I depict are both trapped and transcendent; they inhabit a space where time folds in on itself, where movement is both perpetual and futile. Yet within this apparent contradiction lies a momentary equilibrium amidst the chaos.

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This tension lies within the historical recurrence of revolution itself. Political revolutions promise transformation, yet inevitably fall back into cycles of repetition - new regimes echo the very structures they sought to dismantle. It is within the maelstrom of historical recurrence, that my figural forms exist. They are not simply individuals, but rather, they embody the collective weight of metamorphosis from emergence, strife, collapse, and re-emergence once again. Each layer of time welds into the mass, where every revolution is a recurrence of an ever-enlarging circumference. A succession of contemporary moments that constantly arise and pass away within the inner sheets that are bound to the forces of their time.

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The maelstrom has been a core theme in my work this year - hence the title from the first ‘Open Studio’. The word serves both as a metaphor and mechanism. It is a literal and symbolic whirlpool: a vortex of water and a metaphor for the chaotic movement of a crowd. The figures in my compositions are caught in this storm, locked in gestures of struggle, surrender, longing and escape. There is no clear beginning or end to their movement, like the hands of a clock tied to the mechanics as they mark the passage of time. Each body is denuded, stripped of possessions, so that the epoch, often exposed by worldly identifiers, cannot be recognised. They are everybody and nobody - universal, yet deeply individual, like a single water droplet swirling in a maelstrom.

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The body, throughout the history of art, has been the primary means of expressing metaphysical, as well as physical states, such as rapture, suffering, transcendence and destruction - the body is both subject and object. It is the threshold between the internal and the external, the political and the personal, the mortal and the eternal. The bodies that I depict, are both burdened and elevated. They carry the weight of time but also become the vehicle through which the notion of linear history might be disrupted?

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I see my work as a visual representation of metaphysical enquiry; an attempt to render the invisible structures of existence tangible through the human form. The figures are not merely bodies; they are ideas made of flesh. They encapsulate a temporal being in an eternal condition. They reflect our own grappling relationship with autonomy, volition and control - the desire to forge our own paths whilst falling into patterns of a biological, cultural and historical nature. Are we agents of change, or are we fated to reenact the same revolutions under a new title ‘…in which something happens all over again for the very first time’?

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My scroll-like piece, titled ‘In Search of Lost Time’ extends this idea further. The unravelled outer layers exposed a ‘historical now’ on the time-line. The figures represented a singular time frame that was simultaneously past, present, and future - a fleeting now, a ghost of what was and a trace of what might be. The scroll does not simply portray sequences of a narrative, but rather presents time as a layered and recurring phenomenon. Each rotation of the scroll and each turn of the wheel is a revolution that holds within it, the memory of all prior revolutions. It is history as a palimpsest, constantly being rewritten, but never fully erased.

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What would it mean to stop this motion, to step outside the cycle? My work poses this question despite being an unattainable answer. Yet, I still find myself curious. If the maelstrom ceased, would we be liberated or would we lose the very force that defines our being? Is it within the motion itself that we find meaning, even if it is repetitive, even if it is exhausting? My work captures the moment right before resolution—the moment where possibility still exists, where the body has not yet surrendered to gravity or achieved flight.

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Ultimately, my work is an exploration of the space between compulsion and liberation, fate and agency, recurrence and rupture. The human form, in all its fragility and resilience, becomes the vehicle through which these tensions and contradictions are made visible in my work as I attempt to grapple with the paradox of revolution—not to resolve it, but to inhabit it, to turn it over, again and again, like a wheel in motion or an unravelling scroll.

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In the ever-repeating revolutions of history and being, my work seeks to locate that flickering moment when revolt is possible - when the cycle might stutter, shift, or be reimagined. That moment, suspended in the maelstrom, is where the body speaks: of struggle, hope, return and perhaps, of something new.