We Have Never Been Modern is a series of work which maps the migration of symbols and motifs across decorative and commercial visual culture, focusing on the representation of nature as something translated and distanced through culture. Employing a range of technical methodologies such as craftwork, textiles, photography, and digital fabrication, whilst drawing on a range of visual sources such as Shell Oil advertisements, home garden manuals and decorative arts brochures, the image is treated as a constellation of nodes and linkages, an open-ended network of signifiers, which can go through a process of deconstruction to shape new meanings. Individual pieces operate as assemblages where multiple ideas coalesce – navigating between depth and surface, part and whole, the human and the machine.
