Artist statment:

With my practice I wish to sew together historical research and childish imagination through a distinct visual language. Coming from an alternative upbringing on Dartmoor I have found creating mythical landscapes to be a fecund method of bringing together the personal with the academic parts of my practice.
I move between paper and canvas, indoor and outdoor sites of creation, urban and rural, the imagined and the pragmatic, in order to unlock new imagery, and uncover new methods. I am constantly in a state of dreaming in my practice, weaving in myth and personal experience, rage and silliness, recapturing a girlish wonder and frustration with the world into my own imaginary creations.

Examples of my academic interests include an obsession with various outsider female figures, often sharing animalistic qualities, such as Mary Toft, a Georgian woman who claimed to birth rabbits. With this research I am seeking to develop an alternative logic, using intuition, curiosity, cognitive dissonance, tradition and anarchist ideals to create a space where I can work untethered by convention. I am seeking figures from the past to encourage me to trust intuition and move away from empirical understanding, to be gleefully illogical.

Working plan:
I have been cooped up in a city for the majority of the past 6 years, and I do not find it conducive to my creativity. As someone who makes and creates constantly, I need the space and location to fuel this work. I am currently intrigued by the transformation of scale, through small to large works, but also in folk culture, of stories of fairies and elves and giants.
I am obsessed with house iconography, having been mobile for 6 years without a permanent home. I want to build small paper house lanterns, and use my tent as a site of inspiration.

So much of my practice has been shaped by the need to transport it easily, and set up wherever I am, and I see this coming into the ideas I have around using this residency space. Making habitats in the woods or on the water, folding down and unpacking art works, hanging works on fabric across branches by ropes.

Website and socials:
https://www.galahills.co.uk/
@galamadesomething