Artist Statement

With the use of both photo and video my work explores the unnecessary trauma that I experienced while growing up gay in Northern Ireland and coming to terms with my sexuality, while being raised catholic and in a society that told me that who I was, was unnatural and a sin.

Growing up I was raised catholic and went to both an all-boys catholic primary and secondary school, these environments that I grow up in were hostile for me, every day I would see or hear things like “that’s gay”, “Faggot” etc. and although some people might not understand why hearing these words is so bad it’s the repetition of constantly hearing people use words that you associate with being used in a negative way over and over again, overtime chipping away more and more reinforcing the notion that being gay is bad. My work is revisiting these emotional states and places of significant memories that I’ve experienced.

I started working on this project at the beginning of lockdown which meant that I was somewhat restricted in what I would be able to do, however this restriction made me look at the subject in a slightly different way focusing on smaller details of my environments.