How I Got Here: Finding My Practice at Massey

Posted November 2019

As my time at Massey comes to an end, I’ve been reflecting on how I got to this point—where my practice is sitting now, and the winding path it took to get here.

I grew up in a world shaped by design and architecture. My grandfather was an engineer and car designer. My father is an architect and industrial designer. My mother works in interior and textile design. Creativity was always part of the everyday—conversations about form, materials, light, and how spaces function. I feel deeply influenced by that upbringing, and in many ways, my sculpture practice has become my own version of that lineage. A way to explore what I’ve inherited—those creative genes—but in a language that feels uniquely mine.

I started university in fashion design, attracted to its balance of structure and expression. But two papers early on nudged me in a different direction. One was an industrial design class, where we were tasked with creating a light fitting using only polypropylene. I loved the process of manipulating a single industrial material and responding to its limits. The second was an abstract painting class, where I worked in a restricted palette of whites, focusing on texture and subtle shifts. Both experiences stayed with me—they helped me realise I was more interested in form, material, and perception than any one discipline.

By the end of my first year, I was torn. I had strong interests in fashion, industrial design, and photography, and didn’t want to lose any of them. I chose fine arts because it was the broadest path—the one that would let me keep exploring.

The next couple of years were full of uncertainty. I made work that didn’t feel fully resolved or personal. I often felt like I was creating pieces that were derivative or disconnected from anything I cared deeply about. But in my third year, things began to shift. I revisited the earlier projects that had sparked something in me—my melted polypropylene light, the quiet textures of my white-on-white paintings—and started to follow that thread. 

I began working with recycled industrial plastics, experimenting with how they behaved under light, how they bent, layered, and glowed. This led me to acrylic, and suddenly, something clicked. I felt like I had found a material language that held everything I was interested in—industrial form, transparency, reflection, surface, and light.

My practice became more spatial, more reductive, and more intuitive. I wasn’t trying to prove anything anymore—I was simply following what felt true. And in that process, all the different influences—fashion, photography, architecture, design—started to quietly surface in the work. It felt like me.

Now, as I prepare to show my final works in Exposure, I feel grounded and excited. It’s taken time to get here, but I’ve found a visual language I want to keep developing. Sculpture, for me, is a space where I can carry forward the creative legacy I grew up with, while carving out my own way of thinking, making, and seeing.