Nicole's statement

My work investigates ways of recreating cultural narratives through the poetic use of styles and conventions that have come out of Western traditions in ceramics, sculpture and architecture. Both of my parents were avid collectors of an array of types of collectable objects, ranging from model tractors and cars to coins, books and Santa Clause figurines, giving me a particular closeness to the complications of how objects come to symbolize cultural and personal value systems. I am interested in exploring how the sets of signifiers present in Western traditional formats such as the bust or the neo-classical ceramic platter combine to reinforce colonial and class power relationships. Through a process of focused abstraction that is generated in part through referencing a large range of historical influences, and through displacing an object through its representation in different media, I test the limits of the socially generative power of traditional symbolic formats.