This is an altar piece. I like to describe them as supports for meditation. These non figurative works; are explorations in creating a personal language to express some of the more abstract themes and ideas I have encountered during my research.
When I began making the work for York (York Museum, 2023), I imagined that the pilgrim would want to know
what was in store for her on the journey and would need to somehow make her intentions of why she was seeking contact with the spirit realm known.
The cowrie shell, often used in divination rituals, depicts the pilgrims yearning to know what is in store.
The stone/water-like form is an alchemical reference —the paradoxical/elusive nature of the philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone is not an object but a necessary fiction in thinking through the quality of the goal of the quest. It represents the unification of contrasting elements: to be as solid as a rock-to operate from an immovable point yet to embody the fluidity of water.

The footed candle gives expression to what the heroine wants from the journey. I'm thinking through the feeling of a yearning to spread light. The candle is bestowed a sense of agency by being granted a foot.
These are physical objects I have made and creating assemblages- the act of combining existing materials is akin to the process of collaging in 3D. This process in essence gives voice to and is in dialogue with an autonomous aspect of self, the dialogic nature creates a third transcendent reality.