Ava Hayes makes performative paintings based on the inability to verbally and physically express difficult emotions fully. The work is an exploration and representation of intense bodily feeling. Hayes is interested in the moment when internalised experience breaks to the surface.

Her painting strategies play with the intimacy of memory and soundscapes to create a bodily charge that transfers onto the canvas. As this builds, she utilizes this anxious energy, creating fervent marks that leave traces of this happening in their wake. The immediacy and visceral nature of this painting process allows her to express feeling and sensation in a search for comfort.

Concerned with the present moment of self-surveillance, the work is imbued with a sense of interiority and reflection.