Recent Works

As a collector, finding, buying and cherishing things is a part of life, an extension of the self, a source of enjoyment. Yet, a liminal space exists between recognising the mechanisms of consumer culture and willingly indulging in them. 

Rather than avoiding the hypocrisy of this in-between, the installation embraces it.

Blind Box features hand-sculpted ceramic recreations of Smiskis, commercially produced collectible figurines that typically depict innocent, everyday activities. Here, they instead appear in explicitly sexual poses, transforming familiar objects of comfort into sites that question the boundaries between innocence and desire, intimacy and commodity. Instead of providing the instant gratification that Smiskis are designed to provide, working with clay demands delicacy, mindfulness and patience. Hand-sculpting these figures was an act of resistance against the very systems that produced them. 

The work explores the tensions connecting innate biological desires and the manufactured cravings of modern-day capitalism. Each piece is intended to sit between an archaeological artefact, devotional object and commercial merchandise. Collecting objects isn’t novel; from Chinese mingqi burial goods, created to accompany and serve the deceased, to carved jade statues, symbolic of prosperity and protection, creating, collecting, and cherishing is a part of human history. Today, these enduring impulses have become intertwined with systems of mass production, social media, scarcity marketing and instant gratification. Plastic blind-box figurines have become contemporary talismans, carrying emotional significance despite their commercial origins. 

Rather than condemning collecting, Blind Box acknowledges its deeply human origins while questioning the systems that now shape it. It is a self-portrait of contradiction: a reflection on collecting, consumption and the very human desire to find meaning in the things we choose to keep.