Team Strong is a collection of work that I produced during my masters degree in Art and Humanities at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. The work is primarily about social issues, relationships and personal identity. Based on personal experiences my practice explored themes of brotherhood and unity, touching on William Whyte's theory of 'groupthink' - the nature of behaviour which a collective group of individuals make decisions or display actions that are not representative of the way any one individual would act. In fact most of these group actions arise from the need of members to be seen as one, to establish a single, united identity and to suppress individual responsibility in favour of the collective.
I worked with pattern; combining imagery from Glasgow gang culture and religious and cult symbolism, to represent the collective as they work in unison to build this united identity. Using personal experiences of gang culture, focusing on the peer pressure of the group in which I translated through solid block tone in my print work or solid material in my sculptural work, representing this psychological weight as actual physical weight, pressure and tension.