tiliqua tiliqua

A gift of a Byzantine art book was love at first sight. Until recently I have been interested in images of recent popular culture sourced online. But Byzantine popular culture blew my mind.

Byzantine art in the mid-1400’s had most artists beholden to the church, creating religious iconography and retelling biblical stories. However, I discovered artists painting mythological stories, and semi- human religious figures too. I found bizarre characters that remain unexplained – dog priests and headless men with faces in their bodies. From frescos, sculptures, jewellery and vessels I uncovered refined beauty and macabre images. The treatment of their materials was highly sophisticated but also had a cartoon-like quality. I adored this combination.

These images gave me a visceral response, dragging me. I wanted to respond to them in clay and drawing. My drawings in this series are a direct reflection of the Byzantine period, their myths and cartoon-like quality working to give them a contemporary feel. These influences mix and blend into something new and contemporary for me. My ceramic pieces, both two and three dimensional have developed from drawing and printmaking.

My work is about the story and the materials that can hold the stories. Whilst the Byzantine period is past our relation to story and myth still maintains us.