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DISTORTED
The starting point for this body of work was an interest in Baroque sculpture - particularly depictions of divine and/ or mythic figures. I started looking at this type of imagery because I find myself personally drawn to it and sucked in by it, but I am also very mistrusting of the seductive power it seems to have over me. The Baroque is replete with interesting contradictions - it’s good and bad, it’s high art and it’s low art, it’s beautiful yet it’s grotesque, it’s holy and chaste but at the same time it’s very sensual and sexually charged. It is these contradictions that I find most intriguing about the Baroque, and I am particularly interested in the paradoxical state that it creates within me of simultaneous seduction and repulsion.
I began by taking photographic reproductions of Baroque sculpture that I found in books and making distorted copies of them by physically dragging the images across a photocopier bed. My motivation for this was a desire to disrupt the narrative content and authority of the original image, and also to highlight the fact that a reproduction is always a distortion of sorts. I am interested in the translation of decadent materials such as marble and gold into cheap ink and flimsy paper, and how these material contradictions can affect the way in which the subject matter is accessed and evaluated.
What I like about these distorted photocopies is the fact that the images become much more fluid and ambiguous - they retain enough of the original to be recognisable, but not instantly recognisable. By resisting this instant recognisability, the viewer does not ‘digest’ and dismiss the image as quickly as they might if presented with a more straightforward version of familiar Baroque visuals. Instead, they are prompted to linger a little longer on the image and engage with it in a new or different way. My emphasis on the ambiguity of these images is influenced by Mary Douglas’ writings on the power and potential ‘danger’ of ambiguous entities, particularly when they still resemble their original, but have undergone some sort of transformation or disintegration. She writes:
“This is the stage at which they are dangerous; their halfidentity still clings to them and the clarity of the scene in which they obtrude is impaired by their presence.”
Whilst making this work, I looked at the collages of John Stezaker. I was using Baroque imagery in a similar way to Stezaker’s use of the familiar visual language of classic cinema and stock promotional portraits. Through subtle but often violent interventions, he creates new and unexpected compositions which are both seductive and unsettling in equal measure. I hoped to achieve a similarly uncanny effect with my own distorted images - thus highlighting the very contradictions that first drew me to the Baroque.
Blind, John Stezaker, 2006
Muse XVIII, John Stezaker, 2012
I went on to further distort these images by scanning and then digitally zooming and cropping to create even more disjointed and decontextualised images. Through this process I was exploring how far an iconic image can be pushed before it begins to disintegrate and loose its assigned meaning. This resulted in the work Prometheus Distorted (left), which presents a fragmented version of Nicolas-SÊbastien Adam’s famous sculpture Prometheus Bound. I wanted to incorporate more of a human presence into these digitally manipulated and printed images and so I filled in the white space by following the contours of the sculpture with a felt-tip. I like the contrast of digital and man-made mark, fleshy pink and cold grey stone, the way that the marks begin to resemble a human fingertip or geological formation - perhaps suggesting the original marble of the sculpture. I decided to present them in stark black frames as a contrast to the elaborately carved stone - once again suggesting my interest in the relationship between austere minimalism and ornate decadence. On final reflection, I worry that this work becomes too far removed from the original and perhaps ends up being a puzzle to be solved, which was not my intention. In an attempt to counteract this, I chose a title that hints at both the original source and the process employed - hopefully this frees up the viewer from the potentially distracting task of working these things out for themselves.
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STAINED
This series of works began with an interest in bodily stains and how they might be used to explore the boundaries between the internal body and the external world. I felt that fabric was the most appropriate choice of material, given its intimacy with the body - its tactility and absorbency can also be employed as a metaphor for human skin as a semipermeable membrane. I began by taking a soiled duvet and sewing around the outlines of the stains, which I then filled in with thick, golden thread. The method of making is important here - by using embroidery to highlight the stains, the thread has to physically travel through the stain and become entwined with it. This mirrors the status of bodies as transient entities that cannot be as easily distinguished as we might like from the fluids that they expel and the stains that they produce.
There is a feminist slant to this work, in the sense that female bodies are often conceived as being less well-defined than their male counter parts. They are thought of as being physically softer, lacking in muscular definition, and more prone to leakage. The boundary that separates the internal from the external is therefore more precarious and in need of stabilisation, something which the western art canon has sought to achieve through a process of aesthetic regulation of the female form. As art historian Lynda Nead writes, “the female body is defined as lacking containment and issuing filth and pollution from its faltering outlines and broken surface.� With this work I am challenging the embarrassment and even shame of being a body - particularly a female body - that leaks, oozes, and refuses to be neatly confined. In this respect, I feel that this work fits within the lineage of feminist artists such as Carolee Schneemann, who puts the experience of being a female body at the centre of her work.
Interior Scroll, Carolee Schneemann, 1975. Documentation of performance
All stains are treated in exactly the same way and so become totally indistinguishable from one another. Stains that could be considered more socially acceptable, such as sweat and saliva, can no longer be differentiated from potentially more repellent and stigmatised secretions such as semen and menstrual blood. Through the process of adornment, my intention was to transform the soiled duvet from a site of abject repulsion into something attractive and appealing. There is a dense opulence to the areas of concentrated golden thread, which stiffen against the cushy soft filling of the duvet. These material properties invite the viewer to reach out and touch it, or at least to imagine how it might feel to run their fingertip over its surface, thus encouraging them to experience the work not merely as a detached, static observer, but as a living, feeling, mingled body.
I went on to make the works Pant on Pillows of Flesh (next page) which contain a similarly stained pillow. These works came out of 3D collage experiments (above) that I have been making throughout the year, which have more of a humorous and playful tone.
I wanted to bring an element of this humour into the pillow works, but still maintain the focus on bodily boundaries. For this reason, I chose a down pillow as it contains an organic, lively substance that is very difficult to contain once a slit has been made in the encasing fabric. When working with the pillow, I felt like I was handling a sort of carcass, the innards of which immediately spilled forth with the slightest incision. My initial intention was to penetrate the pillow with a large unlit candle, which would then be fixed to the wall. I was interested in the relationship between the pristine “virginal� candle and the flaccid stained pillow, and how this might be used to critique regressive views towards female virginity and innocence that still abound today. However, after trying this out I felt that it was too heavy-handed and perhaps too similar to the visual language employed by artists such as Sarah Lucas and Robert Gober. I feel that the final works are more subtle, incorporating materials and postures that are suggestive of bodies without referring to specific body parts or actions. Pant on Pillows of Flesh (II) Down pillow, synthetic hair Dimensions variable
Pant on Pillows of Flesh (I) Down pillow, wax candle, metal chain Dimensions variable
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THE MEAN REDS
My intention with this work was to create an immersive black cube installation that felt distinctly separate from the “outside world”, through the use of darkness, sound, smell and the viewer physically passing through a thick black curtain. By creating this separation I hoped to achieve a sense of liminal space and time - according to van Gennep’s classic definition - in which meaning, identity and hierarchy become fluid and ambiguous. Darkness plays a crucial role both formally and conceptually. When you are immersed in darkness your body becomes engulfed by that darkness and the borders that separate it from its surroundings begin to disintegrate. My interest in these ideas are informed by my reading of french psychiatrist Eugène Minkowski’s Lived Time:
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dark space does not spread out before me but touches me directly, envelops me, embraces me, even penetrates me completely… while the ego is permeable by darkness it is not permeable by the light. The ego does not affirm itself in relation to darkness but becomes confused with it, becomes one with it. Eugène Minkowski, Lived Time, 1933.
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The space is filled with the scent of Comme des Garcons’ Avignon - a perfume that purports to replicate the smell of an old gothic cathedral. I decided to use perfume rather than burning actual church incense because I wanted there to be a level of uncertainty as to whether this is an intentional element of the work, or perhaps just the lingering smell of a departed visitor. I also like the kitschiness of “church in a bottle�, and feel that this sits better with the work as whole, than an ardent attempt at faithful recreation would.
The visual element of the installation consists of two projections of fast-scrolling, red tinted images. I deliberately chose clichÊd and highly charged images as I feel this is necessary for them to register with the viewer at such an accelerated pace. There is a level of cohesion to what is presented - recurring themes, the unifying red filter and the accompanying sound which has been similarly overlaid, looped and manipulated. When the viewer first enters the space, there is an initial assault on the senses, as they attempt to assimilate and rationalise what they are seeing, hearing and smelling. I had initially intended to create a fully immersive installation, with all four walls covered from floor to ceiling. I feel this would have been too overwhelming,and the viewer would not want or be able to spend a prolonged period of time in the space.I also like the fact that by using just one wall, the viewer’s attention is focused, it is demanded that they stand to attention and look straight ahead - I feel that the projection has more of a commanding presence this way.
As the viewer passes in front of the two projectors, their silhouette is refracted and fragmented. They become consumed by the physicality of the projection; transformed into an anonymous, dismembered figure that mingles not only with the various projected images and bodies, but also with the surrounding environment. In this sense the installation emphasises the properties of darkness that first attracted me to the black cube as a space for making work. This interest in selfobliteration and displacement of the subject is also influenced by the work of Yayoi Kusama, particularly her large-scale immersive installations.
Yayoi Kusama Fireflies on Water 2002
My hope is that once the viewer has become accustomed to the space, their rationalising impulse will subside and give way to a more sensory and dis/embodied experience. It is intended to be more stream of consciousness or like a dream sequence - although there is a degree of underlying structure, the narrative is disjointed, the content is malleable and the meaning obscured. All of the images religious iconography, film stills, fashion editorials, works of art - exist alongside each other without preference or hierarchy. In the end they are all equal, and perhaps equally meaningless, a fate that the engulfed spectator themselves do not escape.
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I LOVE YOU, BIG DUMMY
This body of work is a result of my ongoing fascination with the Virgin Mary. I wanted to explore why, as a non-believer, I am so drawn to Mary as a figure, and how her image might be used within the secular context of the art gallery. Visual depictions of her are often so over-aestheticised and melodramatic that they become overtly kitsch, and perhaps loose their assigned function - I’m interested in what might happen within this gap. I’m also intrigued by the fact that Mary plays such a crucial role yet she is a virtually silent figure throughout scripture.
I began by making plaster and wax casts from a latex Virgin Mary mould that I bought from ebay. In a similar vein to my earlier distorted photocopies, I wanted to see at what point an iconic image would become unrecognisable and potentially begin to signify something else. With this in mind, I took a plaster cast that I had made proceeded to pour layer upon layer of melted wax over it. I see these images as quick sketches, like drawings in a sketchbook, that go on to inform the development of the work. As with the Prometheus Bound work, I came to the conclusion that if a distortion is taken too far, the icon goes from being too symbolic to being symbolic of nothing at all, which leads to a dead end.
I went on to make some small sculptural pieces with the wax casts and various glass candle holders and dishes from Ikea. I like the domestic feel to these works - to me they look like chintzy objects that I might find on my Nan’s dressing table. I feel that they work better as photographic images rather than physical sculptures - the objects themselves are still functioning too much like shrines. Mary is such a potent symbol that her presence immediately shuts down any alternative engagement or interpretation of the object. Whereas within the photographs it is not immediately obvious what the cast is, it looks more like a vague amorphous blob than a human figure.
I wanted to continue using iconic and mythic figures, but in way that allows the viewer to negotiate these visual cues in a more open and subjective way. This led to a series of collages titled Can I take the Eucharist twice in one day? which combine elements of myth and iconography with more domestic, “down-to-earth� elements. For example, a truncated image of Bernini’s David presented alongside cheap lipstick and a clip-in hair extension. My methodology with these works is similar to that of artist Gabriele Beveridge, who appropriates highly stylised images from fashion magazines and arranges them with mundane household objects such as coat hangers and venetian blinds. Can I take the Eucharist twice in one day? Synthetic hair, lipstick, candle holder, photocopy
Gabriele Beveridge Destiny Angel 2014
Gabriele Beveridge Lucid dreaming hangover 2013
The collage shown here incorporates the inverted latex mould that I used to make the casts of Mary. The way that the head points towards the pot of vaseline seems to invite contact between the two substances - looking back over the images, I couldn’t help but imagine grinding the rounded latex tip into the sticky pink goo. This led me to start thinking about the mould as an active subject rather than than a static object. I began using it as a sort of hand puppet and shot some quick close up videos in my living room. For me, one of the most visually interesting aspects of the mould is the wax remnants clinging to the surface of the latex, that had begun to peel and crack, resembling dry, flakey skin. The video begins with a blurry close-up shot of Mary’s inverted face, which then comes into focus as if the figure is getting into position, having hit the record button. My intention here was for the film to look like a video diary, which I hoped would create a level of intimacy between viewer and subject. For the text, I chose quite colloquial everyday speech, as I wanted to maintain a down-to-earth tone and create a relatable character. However, when read alongside the squirming and recoiling figure, there is a definite hint of anxiety at the prospect of being an incarnated human body that cannot help but leave a physical trace.
Research Statement I am interested in the aesthetics of ritual and the role of visual culture in the creation and consolidation of myth. My practice explores the relationship between our own perishable bodies and the immortalised bodies of religious and mythic figures, whom we worship and adore. My use of found images and fragments of popular culture reflects an interest in the practices of voyeurism and vicarious living, and an investigation into the causes and consequences of these cultural phenomena. I seek to construct disjointed visual narratives, which encourage the viewer to actively engage and imagine themselves as a component of the story. By using collage, fragmentation and distortion, I am inviting an element of the irrational and illogical into the work. I create objects, videos and environments that destabilise the status of the body as a coherent and contained entity. My intention is to prompt a more visceral rather than intellectual response, that gives greater status to knowledge gained through bodily sensation. I am interested in the seductive and potentially manipulative power of visual and sensory cues, and my work explores the issue of genuine human experience versus constructed experience. The concept of original versus reproduction is a common thread running through my work - I am interested in how a reproduction can be subverted and thus undermine the authority of the original and what it stands for. The notions of subversion and deviance play a prominent role within my practice - on the one hand they are conceived as tools of resistance and emancipation, on the other an expression of perversion and corruption. My work tends to focus on seemingly contradictory emotional states and the instances when these emotions intersect, becoming blurred and even indistinguishable.