It’s been quite a while since my first main solo exhibition ‘Forgotten Toys & This might be Fiction’ (Sydney, 2007). Since that exhibition I’ve moved to Europe and have been solidly working away on the Machine est mon Coeur album, developing our live shows, directing our first video clip ‘Thimble of Wisdom’ and making and selling Machine is my Heart stuff…

I have exhibited in France a few times since I moved here but I kind of wanted to distance myself a little from the process of painting so that I could see more clearly where I wanted to go with it next. So I had a little break (about 6 months) which turned out to be a good call because when I went back to it, I had tonnes of new ideas and a fresh direction.


Where is my Mind (2011)

On a personal level, these new works are definitely influenced by the 3 times I’ve lived in Berlin…the street art is wonderful. I have to say that the experience of moving to France (where I have struggled with language and cultural mores very different from my own) has seeped into my work as well. These difficulties have been humbling – at times I have felt isolated and yet somehow the distance has made me feel more universally connected to the human experience. Living in the country side has also been quite a change for me. I do love the city and I will always return there because I feel at home where there is lots of movement and change, but having so much space and time has afforded me the opportunity to see things more clearly, to take distance from distractions and to focus on what I am really about.

Princess for a day, bitch for a life time (2011)

On a more global level…There is ultra-consumerism and what feels like the slow demise of capitalism. Our polar caps are melting, man is constantly trying to control and over-power nature and those with power and money do everything to distract us from questioning the way things are. Organised religions and ingrained social values can be more about manipulation and control. The internet and new technologies  create the possiblity of a great paradox – to be personally distant from the world while still being totally emerged within it, devouring culture at an ever-increasing pace.


Ice world corporation (2011)

For this series of mixed media works, I have taken away the personal (there are no faces in these new paintings apart from the animals in ‘Strange Gods’) to make way for the universal and soulful in the hope that the viewer can project his or herself into the artwork to find their own connection and meaning.


Strange Gods; bunny, fox (2011)

These works are not answers, but rather the exploration of some of the questions that I find surfacing in my consciousness at this point in time.

To see the full exhibition, visit the Machine is my Heart website in a little while…

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