Thought Barefoot, 2023

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Thought Barefoot is a series of collages inspired by the remaining fragments of poetry by Sappho - the work mostly surviving on torn papyri with missing sections and holes. The series reflects on the fragment as a visual form: the collages distill a sense of suspension and fracture of the visual field, and bring into focus a tension between what is missing and what is present; the precarious edges of the collages blur the boundary between the image space and the imaginative one. 

 

In this series I worked with photographs from old naturist periodicals, which I was drawn to for their prosaic natural setting, poses and photographic quality. With their dark inky shadows, blown out highlights and blurred details, the figures form ghostly apparitions immersed in a web of natural elements, speaking to the fundamental emotional and sensuous interconnection between us and the natural world.