Every time I sit down to create, I want my art to be the antidote to that age-old-question ‘When did life get so serious?’. My almost-20-year career working in advertising has left me both deeply jaded and deeply ingrained in consumerism. My art pokes fun at that consumerism but also celebrates it in equal measure. Some of my fondest memories as a child were trips to the milk bar to buy lollies. Iconic sweets like Killer Python, Bubble O Bill and gummy Dinosaurs have now become characters in my own story – through my art I bring them out of my inner world and into a new context. I want to conjure feelings of nostalgia through my practice and pay homage to the unique Australian landscape, iconography and collective memory. By taking these icons out of their known context, it creates new stories from old ones. This absurdist humour has brought a lightness to my otherwise heavy world. I aim to play with the tension that ‘doing it for a laugh’ is a meaningless pursuit with little depth. Through my art practice I argue the opposite – a laugh has never been more important – both in the world and in my studio.