Artist Statement
Mammets: a metaphor for a form of life and their power for transformation.
The Mammets are caricatures; invented emanations with their provenance partly built from factual evidence and retold human stories. Whilst each figure has an uncertain heritage and timelessness, the Romany reference is drawn from familial myths. Made from repurposed family clothing, materials become fragments of memory and animated portals to the past. The work seeks to elevate the status of their existence whilst normality is poignantly observed, transporting audiences towards their remembered worlds.
Cumulative, familial relationships are interwoven through layered narratives, hewn from fragments of memory made physical. The fragile surfaces create an ephemeral materiality; in the drying process, the clay shrinks creating fissures and wrinkles, a suggestion of the temporality of human life. The Mammets’ small scale is purposeful, heightening the sense of the uncanny and of difference. The use of the poetic is intentionally provocative used to question and reflect upon the truth of our memories.