I count Tracey Emin as a main influence on my work; Tracey Emin minus the self-pity and the sometimes irresponsible act she employs in order to never really address the true examination of herself. By blurring the distinction between fact and fiction, editing and creating numerous possible selves, her work seems lost and the real Emin is still ambiguous. My work sees humour in the tortured artist cliché; I feel that rejecting abjection in light of the self examination process is the only way to move forward from this. This isn’t to say that I’m not grateful for the work laid down already by artists like Emin, who allow me to talk about something new by throwing away the already established discourses; something new other than the vulnerability that women are ‘more willing to expose’. My personal history is nothing like Emin’s, it’s not as wretched or violent; having nothing exasperating apart from how exasperating having nothing to exasperate about, is, ironic. Needlework can sometimes be an allegory of the tedium of a seemingly ordinary modern life, at other times it is not. The images I sometimes use from magazines like ‘Vice’ and ‘iD’ provide a platform on which to discuss the hedonism that is infiltrated into our social conscience.