Viscera

Jhana Millers Gallery, Wellington. 1 - 21 December 2022

The work in Viscera developed from an attempt to rid my art practice of animal products.  I had some misgivings about the leather and wool I had been using in the studio. I wondered whether it would be possible to substitute painted canvas for skin and hair, while still alluding to bodies.

In Traveller, an intestine-like mass is entombed in a canvas of flat matt grey, as if cryogenically frozen for space-flight. The use of a necrotic greyed-out palette applied to biomorphic forms evokes the distressed body and more broadly, the realm of technology. In other works, paint is applied in thin transparent layers that pool like secretions in the crevices of the canvas, puckered through the process of sewing and stuffing. 

These works attempt to collapse the definitions of painting/sculpture, internal/external, technology/biology, to evoke anxieties that permeate our shared experience. As we face a future that seems more fractured than ever, this exhibition vacuum-seals and offers back repurposed remnants of our current selves, to help us navigate these uncertain times.