Trauma and tragedy are paramount to Charlie Godet Thomas’s work. The artist draws much inspiration from the complex emotions that are integral to literature and poetry.

In contrast, the past year has brought him happy exposure. He had his first solo show with Vitrine in their London gallery; they now represent the artist in Europe.

His work has also shown at Cactus Gallery in Liverpool, curated by fellow artist Joe Fletcher-Orr, and the Telfer Gallery in Glasgow.

Lifestyle caught up with the British-Bermudian artist, whose work was selected for the Bermuda National Gallery’s upcoming Biennial.

What direction have you taken in the past year?

I have been lucky enough to have had lots of opportunities to show my work in solo presentations and, as a result, I have focused more on making groups of works which sit together coherently.

There has also been a greater influence and focus on writing, particularly the forms and methods associated with writing poetry and a growing interest in the way in which these methods can be appropriated by visual artists.

You live in London. Can you tell us a bit about your relationship with Bermuda?

My mum, Molly Godet, is Bermudian and I have a lot of family and friends in Bermuda. I try to visit often and I have always felt completely at home there despite having been in brought up in London. My family history there stretches back over many generations and I feel an innate connection to the place. I also have a really good relationship with the Bermuda National Gallery and we have worked on lots of different shows together. It’s been a thrill to see how their incredibly hard work has brought artists together and energised the scene. I feel the Biennials have been at the heart of that effect, which is why they are so important.

What’s your strongest memory of your childhood?

I remember seeing the painting Sic Transit by George Frederic Watts at Tate Britain, and my dad reading the text in the background to me: “What I spent, I had. What I saved, I lost. What I gave, I have.” It’s now installed in the Watts Gallery just outside Guildford. I went back to see it recently and it packed the same punch.

Your works in the 2014 Biennial incorporated family photographs in your abstracts. How long did you spend developing these pieces?

The group of works you are referring to started as a series titled Sateen Dura-Luxe. I started making them while I was studying for my master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in 2013 and I’m still working with a similar process, although the initial imagery has since changed.

How do you spend your time while in Bermuda?

I like to catch up with my cousins Flo and Stuart. They’ve always got an adventure ready to be played out and know all the best spots. I always go and do a bit of snorkelling off of the rocks on the North Shore, too, and although my sea legs aren’t so strong, I can’t resist a boat trip. And rum … lots of rum.

Can you walk us through your process, citing one or two pieces in particular?

The work I’m showing at the Bermuda Biennial this year is from the series A Carcass (Une Charogne). The work takes its title from Baudelaire’s poem of the same name.

My intention was for the work to appear as though it had undone itself; the fragments of the photograph having fallen to the floor under the blank diptych (this quality of collapse is evident in other work too; the rubber works shown in Torschlusspanik at Vitrine, for instance). You could think of the panels as the original site of the work, or perhaps the open pages of a book, the words having fallen from them. Although they are presented in fragments, the work uses a photograph of a dead fox that I unexpectedly came across in the road. Another version shows a similar image of a magpie.

On the whole, my work deals with the genre of trauma and tragedy, which importantly, is also a fundamental theme in literature and poetry.

Trauma and photography have some similarities that intrigue me, namely that a traumatic experience can render a moment continually present in a person’s life, while photography has the same ability to hold a moment still, ever recurring by proxy of the image. Working with images that depict or allude to a traumatic moment is fundamental to another set of works, these small-cast wall-based pieces are from a series called Jump from the South Portico. The title of the series refers to a suicide I witnessed at The British Museum.

As years passed after the incident, I began to notice that I had taken a whole series of photographs of open windows or solitary figures standing atop tall buildings. It has occurred to me that this was probably a way to record what I irrationally feared might be a replay of that event, while also divorcing myself from the “now” through the mechanisation of taking a photograph.

My manipulation of these images comes from my desire for them to become something else, abstracting the image so that it can be enjoyed as pattern, form and colour, liberated from the brutality of its content.

Who, if any, are your greatest influences?

I get a lot of inspiration from writing, particularly American “confessional” poets such as John Berryman and Robert Lowell, the methods of Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) and Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. More recently I’ve looked towards literary critics such as Michael Hoffman and noted the way in which he deconstructs poetry. I enjoy lots of different artists’ work, but I don’t really see it as a source of inspiration.

What has been a seminal moment in your career?

I am hoping that they are still to come, but I have had lots of fun in the last year or so working with Vitrine and putting together my first solo show in Scotland at The Telfer Gallery.

I have also just had confirmed my first solo show in the USA which will take place in April next year in Dallas.

What drives you?

I have a compulsion to make my work so I don’t feel like I need a motivation, my compulsion drives me forward.

• The Bermuda Biennial, It’s About Now: Memories of the Present, runs from June 16 to November 26. For more information, visit www.charliegodetthomas.com