'Surface as Practice' Lesley Millar

'In our most intimate relations we acknowledge and engage in this non-verbal form of communication. It is one of the ways, perhaps the most effective, that we can come to fully know another: 'Kisses tattoo my skin, leaving a Braille only your fingertips read' In reading that Braille we are accessing our own personal vocabulary of touch, a vocabulary that we have been accumulating from the moment we were born. Without such points of tactile reference there would be no textural reading, understanding or dialogue.'
(Surface Tensions-Surface Finish and the Meaning of Objects, 2013, Manchester University Press, USA)

There is no getting away from the fact that my practice always comes back to the physicality of materials, the tensions and haptic response connecting or engaging with surfaces convey. I am a great believer in the power of touch and the physical contact between each other. The act of touching someone can resonate powerful emotions of well being. The reasons we go to touch is to make that person feel reassured, cared for and closer to us. Expression on a physical level can bring two identities together and generate extremely powerful responses. The bringing together of materials and surfaces; making with our hands, generates levels of well being and satisfaction in much the same way. In todays world we communicate so much more through flat digital technology and no longer communicate by physical interaction or materials.  As an audience technology enables us to participate in non verbal communication. We have the tools; our hands to do so, but we have always had these tools and they are able to do so much more….we are losing the ability to really ‘experience' I wonder about the next generation and how they will cope or deal with the 'real world'!