From 2008-2014 I made hundreds of small assemblages from found objects and combined them with writing to explore the potential of collage to convey our stories.
Installations of multiple works
RWA Bristol (2009)
Helston Museum Gallery (2013)
Kestle Barton (2014)
Objets-textes
These are works in which I combine words, texts and poetry with found objects to create small-scale assemblages. I have over a hundred pieces that I made between 2006-2014. They were a way of using objects to think though things. Objets-textes were a combination of not just objects and words but of thought. Each combination somehow melded writing and objects with theory, experience and freedom of choice and movement. The latter I did not actually have as a single mother.
The language of assemblage is fragmented and disjointed is used as a metaphor for shifting Subject positions and points of enunciation. There is identification and encounter in found objects and they way they can be juxtaposed with language.
I often use language that is split between French and English. French is not my mother tongue, yet for me it engenders emotional colour and meaning as well as intimating an idea of the split Subject. I use multiple personal and theoretical references as well as word play to create multiple meanings. Poetic texts written onto objects encompass themes of entrapment, pseudo-archeology, ur-historical collections and narrative play. Writing on a 3-dimensional surface can change the directionality of how the text is read – not just left to right but in all directions – and also change the functionality of the text via visual depth and textured visual residues. Meaning becomes scattered and readers are asked to engage in physical and intellectual movement to search for associative meanings.
Delpha Hudson, 2010
Abeille-mere and Mother as house were inspired by theory and personal trauma. They are created as representations of maternal and domestic roles and as modes of escape from language and confinement.
Using writing in combination with things that can be interpreted universally creates a paradox of particularity and indeterminate meaning. Dinggedichte are thing poems, they inter-animate adding semantic, structural and aesthetic densities which explore women, objects, theory and dialogues between.
More writing on http://objets-textes.blogspot.com/
Object Relations were a series are small-scale bozetto ceramic figures combined with small domestic objects inspired by Objets-Textes that developed into Small Promethean Acts.
Small disobedient domestic objects that produce meaning performatively when combined with fragmented female forms. In the encounter and dialogue between things, there is always twist in the tale.
Assemblage works that use found materials have a resonance ‘at that moment of discovery’ and via combination and collage their separateness is removed. Play reveals their familiar and haptic potential.
View other sculpture.