My studio is filled with hundreds of strange combinations of objects and texts.

Like sculptures and poetry by Rodin and Rilke objet-textes are dinggedichte - thing poems. They depend on the interanimation of object and consciousness. Found objects have a material quality that present the reader with sculptural presence, which combined with texts simultaneously mixes objective experience, and subjective experience. The reader’s attention becomes fixed in the zone of imagination where the object-world interacts with subjective and emotional narratives opening dimensions of the ‘lived world’. These are phenomenologically inseparable aspects of an imaginatively engendered unity. (Merleau – Ponty). Things are invested with a new sense of self and interact, creating a dialogue with a lyric quest for dialogue between self and Other.
Favouring idiosyncratic, worn, discarded and memory laden objects, including driftwood, dolls, dead bees, pottery shards, miniature objects, contact lens, cloth, wool, pipes, dice, eggs, ….I use writing in combination with things that can be interpreted universally, yet bring their own particularity and indeterminate meaning.
I am interested in the ambiguity and complexity of resonance between object and text. Objets-textes are ‘a species of centaur – half materials, half words’ (Sigmar Polke). At times unconsciously illustrative, the process of their making is a performance of Feminists texts, personal narratives, and chance.
Removing the separateness of things in play, reveals their familiar and haptic potential creating dialogue in open-ended, discursive process. Writing on things begins a series of ‘dialogues’ between symbol, signs, signifiers and selves, creating a world of possibilities. The relationship between human subjects and objects is mutually constitutive. (Miller et al), and exploring ways in which the material itself may enunciate meaning.(Henare et al, (2007) opening up possibilities for using things to enunciate the subject, and develop new self(ves) through new thinking, The addition of texts adds semantic, structural and aesthetic densities. The process of their making is a performance between subject and object.