Abstract

This practice-led research positions the artist as an archaeologist of their unstable identity, exploring notions of self through portraiture and visual memoir. Working predominantly in oils, an experimental visual shorthand is being developed and refined that utilises painterly techniques of layering and erasure to reveal and disguise aspects of self. In the language of psychoanalysis, this painterly research uses the methods of mirroring, repetition and rupture to disrupt and reintegrate personal narratives. Collectively, these self-portraits illuminate multiple iconoclastic identities, creating a visual vocabulary that communicates affective states of transformation and becoming. Another critical method of the research is the creation of large-scale mixed-media narrative works that appropriate the literary tradition of memoir. These works centre on relationships and their role in shaping and reshaping our perceptions of self from childhood.  I owe much of my inspiration to Virginia Woolf, whose writings still resonate in terms of their experimental nature and style of auto-fiction — part memoir, part essay and part fiction. Methodologically, this research is influenced by figurative painters such as Willem de Kooning, Paula Rega and Jenny Saville, as well as the performance-based narrative works of photographers Sophie Calle and Cindy Sherman. By working through the artefacts of self, this research aims to simulate a new site for healing and connection.