SCULPTURE

Utilising waste material the artist creates a skeleton for the sculpture to build upon.

SCULPTING FROM NOWT'

BEARS AND BIRDS OF BARNSLEY

BIG BASTARD | BOOT SALE BOOZE UP

All Hail Big Bastard

"I met him at an Auction. They sold ferrets and bags of clothes, spanners and white vans, boxes of vibrators, and collections of magazines from 1984.

It was a working class spectacle. I watched this man spit and growl at his children as he gripped a can of Stella Artois. Chugging the beverage in one, he crushed the can between bulbous knuckled. I watched the larger trickle down his neck down to his bloated stomach, resting in his cavenous belly button. He threw the empty can into a wheel barrow and his associates hailed "Big bastard!" as his son jumped up and down upon the empty can with glee. That was inspiring."

OSTRACISED/OSTRICHISED

"A large collection of eggs, osrtich eggs, could be considered quite unusual in Britain. Their history, more so. When ostrich farming

became more popular amongst the more affluent, a few small-scale farms extended their business to capitalise on this none native bird.

The ostrich requires specific conditions for it to successfully breed, of which were quite often not met in the U.K. The parents of these eggs

were angry, I had met them just a short drive away from my childhood home, sandwiched in the Yorkshire countryside between fields of sheep. The ostriches were like dinosaurs to me at age 6. They seem all the more beastly upon discovering the injuries the farmer and his wife experienced. No one has been able to tell me where the ostriches ended, only that they never successfully bred."

IS YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND?

CAST IN SHIT

Postcrete mix set in a plastic bag, dug into a mound of manure. From the postcrete mound emerges a rusty Hoe and metal top which precariously balances a goldfinch nest consisting of horse hair, wood shavings, twig and moss.

This little bird,
was greater than I.

A PRECARIOUS BALANCE

Thick as two short planks.

THE BIRD IS AN ARTIST.

Various nests collected over the span of 2 years have been used to research the use of plastics and human waste within natural habitats. Each nest, belonging to a bird has it's own tragic story. They are a rare insigh into a failing symbiotic relationship between human and 'Other'.