Florence Trust

There is a sense of congestion in the drawings and videos I produce.  The world seems overcrowded, people misunderstand each other, technology is omnipresent but often redundant.  Individuals are examined and their mannerisms observed, repeated and dissected to the point of obsession.
I am interested in the ‘reality’ of an artwork.  By which I mean how the work relates to events occurring in real life.  Although very obviously constructed, I try to maintain aspects of reality in my work by using imagery that records simple everyday events: for example a cough or the spreading of infectious laughter.
Ideologically I oscillate somewhere between wanting to make work that provides real insight into my subjects’ personality, and finding myself moved to construct specific situations, to manipulate and direct events to suit myself. I think my work functions on the tension between the independent agency of my collaborators and my coercion and invention of an alternate order.
“Picnolepsy” is a term coined by writer Paul Virilio to illustrate how contemporary humans ‘dumb down’ their experiences of living in a world with excess information as a way of preserving our fragile egos.  As if your experience must pixilate into smaller, more manageable fragments – a coping strategy for living in our society of speed.  Similarly, I feel that I am in the business of trying to make sense of the jumbled landscape.  I try to make the complicated simple.