'To-Let' looking at toilet graffiti...

I have been collecting toilet graffiti for a few year, I like the fact you can find it anywhere. You can get a sense of the underbelly of a place through the shocking and honest text on the wall...

I was sexually abused when I was 8 years old and from the age of 10 I was frequenting toilets looking for sex... and my abuser, as it was something I enjoyed. That does not mean it was ok. I was to young and did not really understand what was happening. I had grown up feeling that I had no control over...

I remember once leaving a toilet and heading home on my bike this guy in a van stopped and offered me a lift. I said, I was ok thanks and he asked which way I was heading at the mini roundabout ahead. I lied and said straight on. He drove in that direction and I peddled as hard as I could going left up a steep hill...

I met this guy in the toilets at Rugby and he came back to mine and he fucked me, I was so disgusted and ashamed. I showered and told myself I would never do that again...

These are some of the things I have found while visiting public toilets.

But that feeling never lasted long as I had a natural attraction to men... when I was 15 I told my Mum I was gay and she sent me to see a shrink... she said "your to nice to be gay" which was a relief to my Mum and I tried to date girls... I stopped trying when I was 24...

I have been trying to think of away of bringing my work togethe, by way of telling a story. Like Joseph Beuys or Louise Bourgeois, I have decided the best stories are the truth, what ever that is... but I hope it gives a better understanding, of why I make the art that I do.

Mary Midgley describes in 'Beast and Man' how we constantly look back into the past trying to make sense and form patterns of why we do those things... how patterns express who we are or at least a part of who we are...

I constantly find myself going over old work and ideas not really sure why! but through the process of breaking apart and re-building I'm able to mend and make stronger. Thats probably what I was doing with using sex in the work. As sex was the only thing that really gave me any power, I left school with no qualifications and I was ok looking. I used sex to break away from the sexual abuse of my farther and the physical and verbal abuse of my Mother.

 My mother constantly told me and my sister that we were stupid and would never amount to much. When your told this enough times you believe it... It was only when I met Dave and he actually believed in me that I started to believe in my self...

 I knew that when i grew up I would be able to leave the hell I was living in...  my coping strategy was to always look froward to the future. To plan and do things that would make me happy. My Nan was my rock and showed me another way of living... to be humble and not to get to involved in anything or anyone...

 I suppose I was to busy surviving to even notice that there were other things more important going on in the world... I had no aspirations... I flitted from one job to the next and relationship to relationship. But I had fun and sex was always a great escape the more I got the more I wanted.

 It has been said that my art is no more than a banner in a protest but what is art if not a protest and a way of getting people to think differently about things...

 sex is no-longer a driving force in my life, but away away pushing boundaries. "what we know of the world, is what we know of ourselves" James Joyce