These works are primarily based on time and memory, as well as movement through time and memory. It’s important to consider the foundations upon which the buttons are held as an important key. Driftwood is a strong metaphor, that idea that wood drifts is a really important aspect of the work but also that driftwood appears to be in a sort of purgatory or stasis, a liminal space, it's dead but not resting, it's moving and yet not attached to life, not growing. The buttons are also focusing on this idea of loss and movement across time as well. We lose buttons, we rely on buttons, they are nostalgic objects. It's a play on that nostalgia but also these objects as a whole form a kind of solastalgia, where they remain the same and the world around them changes. The colours are chosen arbitrarily yet they begin to speak of different attitudes, they sort of emerge within the work. I'm responding aesthetically and physically and visually to the construction of the work and where the buttons should go and I wanted them to be amorphous forms and to not be like the Australian artist Louise Weaver who creates animal forms, I wanted these sculptures to be memorials that could be moved, that could be changed, that hold significance and then be given back or could it be adjusted. These are non-uments, monuments that are recalling small things and small events. This works also set alongside other artworks, in conversation with them. They are drawn to them and whisper to them but they're also whole in themselves and can operate in solitude. Could they be a kind of non-religious votive? They hold a secret in a way that all good memorials do but yet are uninscribed like most. The eyes of the buttons always open like that of the tekoteko or portrait painting, following you around the room.
Friend, 2022, button on found wood.