“Our whole lives effectively rest on a knife-edge of fear and safety, metaphysically speaking. There is an unacknowledged responsibility we have to ourselves to maintain a layer of distance from the possibilities of a terrifying truth. Balance is a common feature in my work, a precarious stance that can go either way, like a delicate psychological battle for comfort. Best not to interfere…”
(Fiona Shaw, 2008)

The idea of distraction from fear is represented in my work through the use of repetitive physical process and a sense of denial. Methodical action provokes a mindlessness that blanks out unsettling thoughts, but conversely may result in a mood where existential pondering slips into the foreground almost accidentally. So we need simultaneous distraction from thought and from too much thought. The production of ‘things’ in whatever form they may take buoys us up from a creeping distress over the thought that maybe everything is a bit pointless. We can convince ourselves that we have purpose and create our own world of coherent meaning through objects.
(Fiona Shaw, „Statement“, 2008)