Unearthly Remains is a series of still-lifes that explore the dynamic between a domestic object and its generational history. I examine the way that family heirlooms are passed on over generations, losing some of their original meaning as they gather a new context in contemporary culture.

While investigating how an object vacillates between a functional tool and an aesthetic objet d’art, I also approach these images from a psychological point of view, focusing on their ability to transcend their physicality into a spiritual realm fueled by their connection to a time that has passed. Rather than attempt a biographical approach to the subject, I investigate the imaginative relationship I have with the domestic possessions pictured, and the neurotic obsessive fetishism that results in unusual and nonsensical arrangements. The uncanny presence of a life and death force within the domestic space gives context to many of my formal and conceptual choices. Like a taxidermist who arranges carcasses into gruesome “life-like” tableaus that may or may not relate to reality, I take the shells of dead items and bring them back to life through surreal and bizarre theatrics. The work functions as a coming-to-terms with mourning, loss and the inevitability of death, as much as it rejects the passage of time through the re-animation of dead forms.

My work straddles a line between modern memento mori or vanitas – reminders of death and material decay, and images that function as anti-vanitas – denials of death and the rejection of decay.  The result is a series of constructed domestic landscapes that call upon ritualistic narratives woven into the subconscious of my memory.