Making Strange is a still life and portrait project about the everyday. The title ‘Making Strange’ comes from the Irish phrase - to act nervous or shy when encountering a stranger or strange situation. I used this phrase to anchor my narrative, choosing objects for still life images I would encounter on my everyday and then creating a portrait image to mirror this or vice versa. These images are meant to be seen together, side by side, and in doing so interact. There was no defined order which influenced the other: sometimes the still life image came after the portrait. This was in part due to the organic process in how I spent my time working on the project - there was no set time limit placed upon myself and as a result I had more time to think about what I wanted to do.
Collaborations are key in my studies, working with the likes of Mary Clohisey (set designer), and Kieran Kilgallon (stylist and designer), who besides borrowing from young designers on this project, used recycled and up-cycled clothing from charity shops reworking them into new ensembles.
Through this emphasis on collaboration there is also a presence of collage and compromise - a paper bag becomes a vase, jumpers become hats; tights immerse shoes and jackets forge monolithic mounds.
The title came about to highlight the bizarre in the banal, or vice versa: with Making Strange I hope to present a way of seeing things from two different perspectives.
