Rachel Shephard

My practice starts with drawing. Through this process imagery emerges which takes on symbolic meaning, everyday items are reassessed, their significance scrutinised. In this way, balloons become a trap, golden eggs a gilded cage, a mask a means to conceal but also protect, a nest a symbolic container of life that creates vulnerability and enmeshment.

Sculptures, wearable items and masks form the basis of my installation, performance and print-making work.  Materials are carefully selected to symbolise a context or convey a meaning. By combining household items (tin foil, thread, balloons) and natural materials (sheep's wool, soil), I am testing the fragility and tensions between these contrasting materials as a means to visualise, interact and understand my entanglement with the contexts and complexes they represent. 

I am interested in how these constructs affect and alter my interaction with the natural environment; the dynamic between the comfort and security offered by my concealment versus the restriction and physical vulnerability this creates in the environments I enter, is central to my work.  

The locations of the images are carefully selected to convey the interaction between my body, the sculpture and the natural environment. Often, placed in positions of discomfort, jeopardy, cold, claustrophobia and isolation, the precarious nature of the situation is heightened by the presence of the sculpture. Through these moments, I am exploring my connection to nature, and vulnerability outside the usual comforts that wrap my existence. 

By recording these interactions on camera before transferring to screen print, I seek to remove myself and the biography of these images, they become timeless, suspended in history.  I want the audience to be unsure of when the image was taken, the identity of the subject; this appeals to my desire to merge and disappear into a wider time and context.