Languid Bodies (2021-22)
Mixed media installation
'Languid Bodies' explores the intersections between fitness, labour and craft through a feminist lens. Using gym equipment as sculptural motifs, I have created a family of weights – they loll, exhale, and curl up, acting as individual characters.
I am a builder of bodies.
Robots perform exercises which have no effect on their
strength. The bodily becomes the technical, controlled by
the code I write, performing on loop; curling and juddering
until reaching exhaustion.
Deadlift (2021-22) (assembled)
Polyurethane rubber
Ahhhhh (2022)
Bronze
Deadlift (2021-22) (disassembled)
Polyurethane rubber, fibreglass
Pumping Iron (2021-22)
Polyurethane rubber, nylon, robotics, MDF
I make hard bodies soft, soft bodies hard. Leaning into the materiality of the gym, bodybuilding and traditional figurative sculpture. Manipulating matter to form the desired shape - lifting, carving, chasing. Can monuments be lethargic, introverted or honest? This one tries to be. It has deflated after assisting a mother’s labour, a desk jockey’s polyester pocketed buttocks
and a gym bunny’s back. Supporting no more, its work is done.
Deadlift (2022)
Performance
Performer: Théïa Maldoom
Photographs by Gabriel Mansfield
To activate my cast sculptures, I collaborated with performer Théïa Maldoom. Using physical comedy, deadpan humour and static poses as points of reference and return, a semi-improvised (durational) routine is enacted. Liveliness and inactivity segue into one another; both are spattered with moments of slapstick and tenderness.