Regeneration / Transfiguration / Evolution
The grotesqueness of being perceived as alive and human.
The forms grow, taking on new elements, materials found; yarn, condoms, lube, old bedding and old clothes. Materials reused; wire, newspaper, cardboard.
The scene is set, growths from the ground, meaty and slimy, fluids unknown spreading across the concrete whilst cords, fleshy and sore hang from above, something seeping from the inside. Lumpy sacks bulging out of the dense mounds, pulsating a hum of life? death? Something in between. A central pool, opaque fluid encasing a being static in motion. It's feeding. Rather a thing than a scene? An all-encompassing force sucking the essence from a single budding life.
Exploring ideas of queerness, sex, sexuality, gender and their relationships with the modern world in conjunction with horror themes like monsters, aliens and gore. My practice borders between a fun DIY exploration of shape and form with recycled materials like cardboard, wire and papier mâché and the unnerving invasiveness of ambiguous horror with special effects and prop making techniques.
With the DIY construction materials visible and particular focus drawn to the finer details of prosthetics, obvious theatricality juxtaposes with visceral realism. It is not to deliberately represent specific examples of bodies, figures or particular scenes but rather mixing scales and languages of bodily horror; limbs, blood, fluids and landscape; craters, volcanoes, emerging natural structures.
Mire Lee works in this way, installing fleshy, organ like abstractions drooping and draping from the ceiling and walls, her works evoke a queasy reality, binding a relationship between the organic and the engineered with tubes and silicon. With Carriers – offsprings (2021) shown alongside H R Giger’s provocatively horrifying drawings visualising his angst toward the Cold War, the two artists reflect and refract playfully juxtaposing a darkness within bodily forms that illicit a promiscuous atmosphere. I began my work through standalone sculptures much like Lee, with the natural elements incorporating with bodily functions, and influences from Giger that has further opened an avenue into sci fi filmic media.
Installation View, Mire Lee’s Carriers – offsprings (2021) at Schinkel Pavillon (2021) ANTENNA SPACE.
The body horror in visceral DIY nature exploring themes of real-world politics in Alien, Hellraiser, The thing and War of the worlds encouraged me to investigate specific industry level techniques within my works, using everyday items to illicit visceral responses on a visually grotesque level. This alongside queer contemporary artist Jenkin Van Zyl who creates a uniquely queer lens within set scenes emphasized through odd and unnerving imagery in multi-dimensional mediums. There is a crossover of horror themes and promiscuous queer identity within Jenkin’s work following Escape from Fort Bravo (2016) as you are invited to investigate the two themes in a playful arena of strange items littered around you. Paul McCarthy explores controversial topics in this way focusing on the prop making movie aspect. His works are stomach churning and dives into another level of depth in body horror.
Installation View Jenkin Van Zyl’s Escape from Fort Bravo (2016)
Horror is often a crutch for exploring real life events in a taboo or controversial lens. Queer identity is a prominent theme I illustrate in my work so artists like Jenkin Van Zyl and also Danielle Brathwaite Shirley who explores intersectionality of queerness and race within digital media and horror themes, are incredibly influential in my work as I can embrace identity within a more nuanced lens, creating in a counter intuitive, nonlinear or improper (queer) order of making.
Previous exhibition works resulted in static forms lacking context, there was potential to expand the narrative of the ambiguous forms through other mediums; digital media, comic, zine, poster. My attempts to translate 3dimensional sculpture/installations to 2dimensional imagery expanded the possibility of exploration through opposing elements – the physicality of ‘in world’ structures focused on texture and fluidity and the further dissection of the same objects through digital medium, editing and refining. To entwine these experiments, I installed a set/scene into a space that encourages viewer exploration, to immerse themselves in the piece to feel the reality of the textures and motions.
Like a movie set or theatre stage a narrative is created through its set and props, each element uncovering notions of an idea and its relationship with its surrounding environment.
The sculpted forms entangled into the world you stand in_________. The posters exploring themes relating to queer bodies and how the consequences of something (not yet determined) result in something horrific, like the scene in front of you.
Bibliography
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Mire Lee: ‘hr giger & mire lee’ @ Schinkel Pavillon (2021) ANTENNA SPACE. Available at: http://antenna-space.com/en/projects/mire-lee-schinkel-pavillon/ (Accessed: 01 May 2025).
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Escape from fort bravo (no date) jenkinvanzyl. Available at: https://www.jenkinvanzyl.co.uk/escapefromfortbravo (Accessed: 01 May 2025).
