ABOUT

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I am Ruairi and I am an artist and writer from London U.K.

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I make surreal and abstract sculpture and 2D artwork with imagary of plants and animals, turning them into strange dreamlike creations. I am exploring humanities relationship with the natural world, and how our nature conflicts with that of the organic world that surrounds. To express this common motif throughout my work  I have manipulated the broad subject matters of plants and animals, blending them together with human things and bringing it all to life. Many of my sculptures and installations appear to be moving, and many of them actually do move, as well as having sound, and sometimes elemental effects like running water, smoke, ice and even fire. I also use other methods and experimental effects to illustrate my feelings & ideas, such as animation, film and the written word. 

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Growing up in an such an urban environment, I developed a longing for and fascination with the natural world, but my eye has always been particularly drawn to the busiest places in nature, those filled with a variety of life. I have an obsession with the subject of exoticism, bright colours and striking patterns in nature. Tropical rainforests, coral reefs - in a similar way to cities these environments are heavily saturated with everything: Noise, conflict, biodiversity, pollution and the highest density of life on earth. I see them as battlefields of different wants and needs underpinned by structural violence, constant feeding frenzy's of struggle and desire, yet by some miracle their inhabitants survive and coexist.  In my artwork i want to acknowledge the contradictions and zaniness of these 'hothouse' environments, the unpredictability, confusion and wonder they inevitably create, and show appreciation of the civilised brutality of nature, how it mirrors that of our own brutal civility. It's a type of catharsis; seeing chaos and absurdity represented and made fun of is strangely grounding.

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I am also strongly inspired by animism, the belief that everything is alive or has a soul. A lot of my work involves symbolically giving life to and animating man-made objects and things that we experience as inanimate, but which are in fact moving slowly, like plants (but not as slow as you might think).