Through 'my bedroom', I could adopt the role of 'a visual conduit'. Through this installation, I was able to display all other works I had created over the last two years and unify them under one context. However, I later decided that it would be better to set them up within an installation resembling bedroom. The dolls were originally considered to be displayed in a museum-like environment. This was applied to my dolls which, despite all of them being derived from almost the exact same template, manage to represent several characters at once. The idea is that the less details an image has, the more it can be said to represent and therefore have greater capacity for emotional connection and investment. I was also inspired by Scott McCloud's text Understanding Comics in which he discussed 'amplification through simplification'.

The concept for the dolls was inspired by the works of Mike Kelley, in which he explored how the simplified image of a stuffed toy can become the object of great emotional attachment. I interviewed a number of people about their favourite fictional characters who I then recreated, all of them based on the same template. Initially, this project had focused on the handmade dolls (pictured). Therefore, while working on my Final Major Project, it seemed only appropriate to incorporate the text and thus, bring my exploration on the subject at university to some form of closure. Not only was this text key to my research on 'media fandom' but it also initiated my interest in focusing on fandom as a core subject to my artwork. The title for this project comes from the book Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture which was written by Henry Jenkins and originally published in 1992. The intersections between them, in line, form, and populism provided the foundations of my artistic beginnings… I make the rules of the game that becomes my art.

I’m aware of Picasso from beginning to end, just as I’m aware of monster magazines and Jack Kirby.

Textual poacher