My life purpose is to declare war on repression. It is an unbeatable foe and a lifelong obsession. In this weird, futile battle I want to make people notice repression as the root of a lot of human harm. If we can spot our own repression we might be able to take off the armour and feel something like peace.

I make things with print and sculpture. Plaster keeps coming back. It is fragile and temporary and it can feel like skin. I vacuum form thin plastic matrices, carve them with drypoint and carborundum, ink them like an etching and pour plaster into the plate so the cast carries the marks. What comes out are relics and armour that hold pressure, fear and history.

The project draws on Terror Management Theory and Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death, which sees culture and self-esteem as ways to manage the terror of mortality. I work alongside artists I respect, Marcelle Hanselaar for her absolute pursuit of human uneasiness, Do Ho Suh for portable memory and the idea of the body as architecture, and Hans Bellmer for the disassembly and reassembly of bodies as a form of protest.

My work is a space for projection. The armour is not a call to fight or a trophy. It is a vessel for compassion, a way to show my own repression and invite others to shed theirs. My practice is a call to notice, accept and act..