amowbray@earthlink.net                                     Artist statement

I produce work that investigates my relationship as an artist with the objects I’ve created and how this relationship functions in the construct of the gallery or museum space.  Synthetic materials dominate our culture, from children’s toys to shopping bags. Contemporary art and its ideas and metaphors can also be viewed as synthetic. In my work, I use these materials to create or experience something real in this world of the artificial. The object-based installations are derived from many sources, times and histories. I often use a blend of art and literary references to explore these ideas and look for a personal connection with the objects through a functional performance. The interactive element often exists outside of the gallery in another location or context. This shift is important to me in the way Henry David Thoreau used his journey to Walden in order to gain perspective on society or on the other hand, Marcel Duchamp used the gallery to present a urinal. Recently most of my influences are deeply rooted in the Victorian time period. Some of the literary references have been fictional characters such as Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, or the nameless wife in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ”The Yellow Wallpaper". This interest in the Victorian stems from parallels one can draw with today’s society. As in the 19th century, we are again in the midst of exploration, of changes in technology, of new insights on understanding life, of great unbalanced divides in class and wealth and greater gains in gender equality. These parallels inform my fascination with the instruments, motifs, literature and myth of the Victorian period, and its use as a metaphor in the creation of uniquely crafted objects, and questions of gender roles and paradigms.