This series of sculptures began in 2022, when I had finished ‘Born in a Museum’, a series of flat sculptures and now wanted to experiment with 3D form. I played around with wooden armatures, finding my own way of creating a body with a woven superstructure of cardboard and finally covering this with cloth or clay. The painting process is spontaneous, marks being made in reaction to an initial colour and the shape beneath it.

Real characters appear in the sculptures – Jimi Hendrix, Emperor Diocletian – and many of the art that I love has crept in too; sculptures by Bharti Kher, Mughal miniature painting, Pop Art from the 1960s among others.

I want to make extraordinary figures that hook in the passers-by with their gaze, while unnerving them at the same time by being part imaginary, part familiar.