‘No matter what instruments (man) uses, at some point he reaches the edges of certainty beyond which conscious knowledge cannot pass.’
Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, 1964.
To dream, to recall memory and to experience the spiritual is to encounter the mysterious boundaries of consciousness. These mysteries have been a source of fascination throughout human history, investigated particularly in the work of Freud and Jung, and subsequently explored in the art world as Surrealism.
The way video transports conscious ideas into imaginative moving depictions proves highly effective in creating a sense of the surreal. My aim is to evoke qualities of the unconscious through the use of video, taking inspiration from the work of Bill Viola who works with the human figure and themes of life and spirituality with dramatic, powerful effect. The fragility and fallibility of memory is a personal source of interest, relating to the decline of memory through ageing. Recent investigations have led to the elderly generation as the subject of my work, who hold a treasure trove of knowledge, memory and experience: a depth of unconscious history.
