Untitled - Royal College of Art Degree Show, 1994

Untitled was created for my MA Fine Art (Tapestry) Degree Show at the Royal College of Art in 1994. The installation consisted of long lengths of dried grass coated in white household gloss paint and inserted into a false gallery wall, appearing to emerge or gush directly from its surface.

The work developed in response to the white architectural space I had been given for the exhibition. I was interested in the beauty and unruliness of the dried grasses, but chose to coat them in the same kind of household paint associated with the surrounding walls. The grasses therefore occupied an ambiguous position: recognisably organic, yet altered by a material associated with the domestic and architectural environment.

Emerging directly from the wall, they appeared almost to form its interior or lining, as though the architecture contained an unexpected organic material that had begun to break through its surface.

Looking back at the work from the perspective of my current practice, I recognise an early interest in the uncertain boundary between the natural and manufactured. The simple act of covering grass with gloss paint altered how the material could be read without entirely disguising what it was. This tension between material recognition and uncertainty has subsequently become an important and recurring concern within my work.