Your work is very related to relationships between humans and other animals and the environment. Where and how did you begin?
My work has always been about these arbitrary – but dubious – boundaries that humans create to define and control the world. My early work looked very specifically into the relationship between the artificial and the natural in terms of medicine and science. It is not far from these two terms – which seem so obvious on the surface but turn out to be much more intertwined on closer inspection – to an examination of the relationship between people and the world. Also, I’ve always been interested in making work about the world around me, rather than the art world. In that sense my work is more social than formal, and from my perspective the relationship between people and other animals and the environment are central to the big issues of my world. Our response to things like climate change and the pandemic very much reflect general society’s understanding of people as essentially separate from nature. Looking at these relationships is very much my way of tackling the big issues without getting too didactic or distant from emotional experience.
What literature, movies or historical events do you feel inspired by?
My work very much comes from things I read and see and hear. I am always looking around for stories and ideas to work with. If I had to come up with one key text it would be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For me, Frankenstein is a story about bad parenting. Dr Victor Frankenstein creates a new being, but is horrified by the fact that it doesn’t look like him. He rejects his creation, refuses to love or care for it, refuses even to create a companion for it and thus condemns ‘the monster’ to a life of loneliness and segregation. While Dr Frankenstein’s ‘hubris’ is often cited as the tragedy of the novel, I see his abrogation of parental responsibility as the real cause for the violence that ensues. If we are going to create new life, do we not have responsibilities towards that which we create? This seems to me to be Shelley’s question, both as a creator in a time of scientific upheaval and as a mother, because Shelley was both. She was also a committed abolitionist who boycotted sugar due to its slave plantation origins. The genius of her story is that it is all these things and also a great science fiction plot.
How do you feel about the current apocalyptic situation? Would you refer it to your work?
I’m certainly very conscious of it, and the work that I am making now directly refers to it. In fact, I can’t imagine how I could make work that doesn’t talk about it. It seems so vital and so pressing. However, I don’t think there is much value in just making work about how terrible things are. It’s too easy.
