Miranda Housden

My work explores our relationship to societal codes, the forbidden, and our desire to seek connection – all questioned and manipulated through colour, texture and scale. Through binding a mix of precious and mundane objects with rope, ribbon and steel, I create unsettling but familiar household possessions and toys. Tampered sumptuous fabric and furs, seemingly exquisite representations of our desires, tempt but ultimately disappoint.

Drawings with intense dark background layers of graphite, are erased to reveal fleeting memories, glimpses of satisfaction and momentary peace floating in the abyss.

Recent paintings play with scale, light, texture, surface and depth. Reveling in the intoxicating smell, texture and translucence of paint, each painting is a celebration of difference, using sweeping strokes and fine detail, subdued tones mixed with flashes of exuberant colour. They use metaphor and symbol to describe where joy, trust and generosity transcends into a murky and menacing world of obligation, rules and contracts.

Below is a film of my latest installation Players in the Old Morgue, Plymouth and images from exhibitions in Bangkok, London, Tallinn, Prague and Rome.