Demelza Toy Toy
Artist Statement
I am a London-based artist working across performance, sound, installation, writing and material process. My practice asks how histories come back through bodies, objects, images, water, voice and sound: not as a return
to origin, but as recurrence, pressure, residue
and alteration.
I listen for the point at which a body, object, sound or system begins to behave otherwise. Otherwise is not escape; it is a shift in function, relation and expectation. A plant stops being background and begins to organise sound and attention. An instrument is sounded by non-human contact. A voice acts on the body. An object reshapes perception through the relations it enters. At these points, the work becomes a
live system rather than a fixed image.
Sound operates as a form of contact: between bodies, instruments, water, speakers, voice and public space. It registers pressure, instability, proximity and presence. I build situations in which meaning emerges through relation: between electricity and breath, plant movement and acoustic feedback, recorded voice and audience attention, material behaviour and the conditions of a site.
Performance is a way of producing conditions.
The body is present, but it is not always the centre. Agency is distributed across bodies, objects, technologies, atmospheres and environments.There is a redistribution: who or what gets to act, speak, sound, amplify or be heard.
The live moment often continues by changing form. These forms do not simply document the work; they become part of how it is carried, altered and encountered again.
Across the practice, I create conditions in which what has been stored, silenced, damaged or overlooked can be sensed again: not as complete history or recovery, but through vibration, gesture, residue and material afterlife.