This research is my artistic response to the phenomenon of recent demographic changes and the crossing of conceptual borders within my home town of Dungannon. It consists of a series of experiments informed by my own experiences of an identity that keeps shifting on me, and of my home town that is barely recognisable after the impact of immigration caused by postmodern economics and politics.

In my experimentation there are constant references to the edges of borders when viewing the shared margins between different surfaces used to create the artefacts. This blending of 3-dimensional and two dimensional perspectives is where “reverse perspective” interpolates and arrests the viewer.

As stated above, my own identity has shifted and continues to shift. The consequence of which is a core concept in my practice-based research. An example of this is the way my legal identity has become dual. I am no longer a UK citizen only; I am now a dual citizen of both the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

My experimentation with trapezoids produced work that could be described as neither one thing nor another. It was not quite a sculpture and neither was it traditionally framed imagery. This in-between liminal quality usefully signifies the in-flux aspect of the changing population of Dungannon. The animation effect generated by the viewer’s own movement will stop mid-transition. Transitional views reveal themselves at the pace with which they are viewed by a moving viewer/audience.

The method of laser-cutting imagery onto wood mimics the skill of traditional master craftspeople. It exemplifies changing values and perceptions in that traditional carved work is admired for the skill needed to produce it, unlike modern laser-etched imagery. This temporal variant in perception is encoded within the artefact as an indexical sign.

Creative Inspiration: Patrick Hughes

Patrick Hughes’s work was uniquely inspirational for this project in that the “reverspective” technique he developed creates opportunities for his audience to pleasurably scrutinise their own perception. I felt this technique – which literally exposes an individual’s false preconceptions caused by ambiguity in perceptions of “figure-ground effect” – could be adapted for my research and its sociopolitical and biographical narrative context.