'I see my work as an exploration of human presence and its indivisible relationship with the material world. To unlock the possibilities within this fundamental relationship is part of the challenge of the work. Within this, understanding physicality and the nature of energy is a central concern.
Materiality, however, is not important for its own sake. I think of material as generic matter capable of many disguises, each of which can communicate the nature of existence.
The work frequently incorporates found objects. These are chosen for their emotional and visual content; the historical context of their making is not always relevant. The eclectic mix of ingredients in individual pieces acts, for me, as a generator of a field of energy, housed in the skeletal remains of other things. I form pieces in this mix, within which all is possible.
‘Not the full story’ is a shelved collection of wares, behaviourly irreverent, playing host to a perspex structure with the propagational drive of a spider plant. It is intent on reminding us that all is not what it seems, even in the simplest of things.
A repeated characteristic of the work is that it formally clusters or takes on the collective intelligence of a swarm through its many parts. Works, such as ‘More than anything’, and ‘I don’t know about that’ become collective forces, mechanisms that coalesce to form a way of invesigating the nature of matter, its use and abuse through overproduction.
That the presence achieved within the work hovers outside the constituent parts of the assembled piece is important… for me this is the transcendant moment, the stretch which broadens the teritory of our perception, and our understanding of ourselves. ‘Objects in an act of survival’ are not just surviving, they are expressing a wish to extend beyond themselves into a more transcendent existence.'
Maud Cotter - Artist Statement
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