Mourl Ferryman

“That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.” Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake

I paint with Encaustic Wax overlayed with oil paint and combined with collage and mixed media to create hybrid points of transferral where such divisions as ego, alter-ego and other disappear infering a continual adaptation and rearrangement of identity. Inherent within this is fragmentation, rupture, contradiction, and multiplicity as analogy to the human, technological and social conditions of contemporary society. My work responds to questions of identity, individuality, and conceptual understanding of ‘self’, exploring notions of ‘otherness’, physical discreetness and confluence with the built environment. It is important for me to use my work as a means of exploring and potentially understanding human behaviour as manifested through images it constructs of itself.

Self Portrait

h24.5 x w20.3cms

This is the second in an ongoing series of portraits questioning the notion that we derive a sense of our own identity from the facial response of those around us. What do we understand, what do we recognise, what kind of identities are we forming when our own face and the faces of those around us are distorted through Restylane and Collagen implants and frozen by Botox?
Inhabiting the Matter

h75 cms x w155 cms

This work investigates ways in which the 'other' might be shown through imagery of the black female, viewing this 'other' as an integral part of the self for.. "..withought the other, the self is threatened with irradiation into the void", (Baudrillard 1993) Housed in the triptych form of a conventional catholic altar piece the work makes links with the notion of Celebrity as Diety, represented by a cumalative female stereotype, an improvised composite being, a perpetual evocation of the trinity 'the other', 'the self' and 'myself',.
Succint Dreams for Specific Outcomes

h99cms x w84cms

“The worst realities of our age are manufactured realities. It is therefore our task, as creative participants in the universe, to re dream our world. The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have it” (Okri Ben, A Time for New Dreams, Rider, April 2011)
'all exteriorisations are exteriorisations of the skin’

h76.5cms xw51cms

The central figure in the painting is manifestation of our contemporary obsession with celebrity whom I call the goddess 'CeeBee', she is requiring of constant worship through attention and emulation (a theme also explored in my performance work). She is also me for don’t I wish these things? In this spotlight of adulation she/me/we ascend the all-consuming city protected by the immaterial smoke of digital capitalism.
Untitled

h58cms x w38cms Oval

The background of this work is based on satellite images of the earth, using the meaning of the word 'satellite' [an artificial object revolving around a natural body] as allegory for the condition of female images in contemporary medias and women's use of artificiality and modification to achieve them. In the foreground our current goddess Celebrity whom I call 'CeeBee' .
‘strange things happen everyday’

h91.5 cms x w30.5cms

This painting is a representation of Claudia Aderotimi a 20-year-old British girl of Nigerian descent who, in February 2011, travelled to the USA for an illegal buttock augmentation and died as a direct result. The avatars of urban music celebrity that Claudia died emulating are called 'The Hiphop Honeys' Angela Lola-love, Buffie the Body and Pebblez who raise the spectre of Saartjie Baartman, the African woman paraded as ‘The Hottentot Venus ‘ in the 1800s.
Imperfect Protection

h91.5 cms x w61cms

In a society that worships beauty, celebrity and youth: reflecting an increasingly narrower palette of images, celebrities are the most effective sales force of our age, popularising ideas and behaviours (Mayer Catherine, amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly, Vermillion, May 2011). But what is it they’re pushing?