JUSTINE HOUNMAN

Justine Hounam's artwork investigates notions of childhood, single motherhood, domestic violence, gender, territory & race, as depicted (often with humour) by the body, the home, architecture & rural landscape. Hounam interprets these themes through different but related processes of ‘making’, using found objects, personal possessions and traditional ‘manufacturing’ methods.

When making work, she often un-picks the so called ‘traditional’ roles of men and women in order to critique lack of valuation of women's experiences. Hounam dismantles & re-assembles antique objects such as a writing desk or her grand-father's clock and reconstruct them using multiple media. Such constructs (of inherited clock and writing desk) are, for her, overly-masculine, material constructs relating to men's dominance, meaning that women's experiences are not equally valued.

In re-assembling objects, Hounam often reproduces objects, or fragments, using the process of slip casting, (fired and unfired clay slip). This creates a multiplicity of casts, e.g. vegetables or furniture. She often juxtaposes these with observations of the (rural) landscape, to generate dialogue between, e.g. the outside, the home and the gendered body.

www.justinehounam.co.uk

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