Bricolage, Autumn 2025

Bricolage of inanimate objects lying around in my studio on thin plywood with organic forms (cedar catkins).  650*650mm in circumference.

As part of the Press Play: a collaborative, experimental multi-part exhibition, University of Reading

A collection of knick knacks parks on a circular ply.  Its residents are catkins in animated forms, discarded mini-bottles, children’s toys, a cemetery of vape refills, decaying fruit, a shuttlecock, dried hydrangea mops, leaves.  The narrative is there to be eeked out: the peg-doll dressed for a carnival stands out above her people and a caped beadman stands at her feet. Hiding on the edge a playmobil boy wears a lifejacket – a route of possible escape?

It was inspired by the artist Adrian Villar Rojas’ Pieces of the People we Love (2007) which was science fiction bricolage romance. 

Conception and Making

This was the second in a three part collaboration project where we begin with the piece of a fellow artist to produce another. I was as given a piece about distraction to use as my starting point.  There were no instructions as such.

I keep a lot of bits and bobs in my studio that I have found in some way interesting.  For my dissertation I read Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter (2010), which talked about the agency of ‘inanimate’ objects.  I found that while I was in my studio thinking about the nature of distraction, I was being distracted by my studio paraphernalia, so I decided to use them for this next piece.