← All Exhibitions
We are all familiar with the feeling of being restricted physically and emotionally – both by ourselves and others. Even before the pandemic, our flesh-and-blood bodies have been restrained to office chairs under artificial lights; our corporeal sense of Self displaced by 2-D avatars – flat, cold, glitched and distant. Emotional bondage is a self-perpetuating web. If your neighbour subjugates their will, you feel pressured to conform. Freeing ourselves from self-flagellation and capitalist fetishism is difficult when anxiety is intermingled with pleasure. ‘Of Human Bondage’ explores subjugation through a variety of themes: socially constructed divisions between motherhood and sexuality, convergence of shame with desire, increasing divides between body, nature and technology, the collective yearning to go back to our roots and reconnect with our heritage, body and environment. Materials such as paper and textiles were used as a stand-in for skin, repeatedly treated and mistreated: scarred, stretched, worshipped, torn, stroked, wrinkled, tantalised with hot wax, cut, exposed, liberated and adorned. ---Andy King