Mother Tongue.

 Painting on show within the 'Mother Tongue' exhibition of works by current students at my Institution - the context of the show was to offer an opportunity to show works engaging and celebrating the diversity of the student body.

This work is developing ideas of communication and human interaction; the photographic elements are studio portraits of small sculptures created in the studio.  These forms have been collaged into the picture plane of the composition in such a way to suggest a relationship. Although they find themselves in a strange and sometimes confusing landscape there is a shared understanding between them.

 

Alone the works are poised and self-sufficient yet when together they seem engaged in private conversations and shared understandings. My own personal experience being born in Fiji and spending my formative years in multiple different cultures informs my practice through the embodied experience of understanding difference.