Miranda Housden

My work explores the games and rituals that govern human interaction. I am particularly interested in the point at which rules twist, bend, and break to reveal underlying tensions. While we seek connection, we often find ourselves trapped in cycles of competition, consumption, and conformity. Through sculpture and painting, I examine the fragile structures that shape our social landscape.

Drawing inspiration from religious artifacts, exotic plants, and everyday objects, my sculptures resemble toys and games. They are playful yet unsettling metaphors for societal dysfunction. My pieces invite interaction but quickly frustrate, exposing the instability of systems built on power, control, and greed.

Materials – fur, fabric, steel, ribbon, rope, underwear and found objects – contrast soft with hard, warmth with coldness, and the precious with the disposable. Intuitively formed, my work bridges both conceptual and formal art practices. Recently, I have expanded these ideas into oil painting, aiming to seduce and overpower the viewer, blurring the boundaries between two and three dimensions. 

My installations range from a giant pink satin and fur chandelier crashing to the ground, taking on the form of a monkey’s cooking pot, to a delicate life-size child’s swing inviting play, made up of plastic sweets, to an immersive installation of oil paintings comprising the 32 pieces of a chess set, each representing a significant archetype in my life.

Games psychologically function as systems that reinforce social norms, offering an illusion of choice within invisible, predetermined boundaries. Drawing from behavioural theory, I bind material to symbolise how individuals navigate constraints – whether by conforming, resisting, or subverting them – reflecting the tension between autonomy and control. My sculpture tempts touch, only to bite back or disintegrate, mirroring the psychological struggle within competitive, hierarchical, and patriarchal social structures. In the end, no one wins.