Hannah Simpson

My work questions the relationship between rationality and instinct and how they are perceived both in society and personally. Typically we suppress the instinctive part of our personalities and tend to trust more in rationality. I want to encourage people out of their comfort zones by encouraging them to engage with my work in a purely impulsive and natural way. I use bright colours, curved forms and interesting textures to urge the viewer to want to touch and play with the forms. The sculptures that I create resemble ‘monsters’. As children we try to hide from the monsters that we imagine just as we hide from our natural, impulsive side of our personalities as adults. Therefore the monsters are created to encourage people to want to conquer their fear of being irrational and imaginative and immerse themselves into these sculptures. The idea of play and joy is the feeling that I want to create with my art, which is why I have not made scary monsters but instead ones that are inviting and surreal which attempt to tempt you into a idiosyncratic world. I aim to continue developing my work after graduating and start to experiment with how my sculptures can be combined with product design. I hope to produce unique furniture that challenges how we interact with the spaces around us.