Jah Maskell

Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photography)

My installations are rooms within a home, investigating isolation in reference to the working-class culture of the 1970s, to explore fragile domesticity and the stress of childhood. Actually, I just want to make my Mum happy in anything I create. Through video installation, I pair melodramatic self-portraiture with hand fabricated and forged steel furniture—welded, tapered and rusted steel replicas of designer furniture that provide a backdrop to the moving image. I manipulate steel through heat and blunt force and the self through costume, make-up and characterisation to recall feelings of anxiety, jealousy and discomfort with my environment and a sense of self from childhood to adulthood.