Spirit Guides

Spirit Guides , 2019
Mixed Media Collage
66 cm x 91 cm

Ever since my mother passed I have noticed all the animals that show up – especially when I visit her grave. Sometimes they hang around for quite a while… they look at me. First, it was a coyote… a skunk, a robin, a cardinal… 20 black squirrels practically pouring out of a tree (I gasped). I like to think through them she is watching over me. I call on her energy to guide and heal my family. At the time of the Cacao Ceremony, I was feeling very low. After the sudden death of my mother, and struggles with my Dad in his grief, I was depressed and lost, struggling to keep afloat in the turbulent sea of life. I didn’t feel creative. I wanted some form of escapism – which as a recovered addict can be dangerous, but I wanted to be in an altered state to escape my life. In the ceremony, I envisioned a red fox which led me down a path to my mom, on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and we just held each other. I could feel her body. I could smell her. We said nothing, we just looked out to sea… where my dad appeared to us on a stone bed in a floating mausoleum… The maximalist collage evokes a darkly mysterious vision of death, sex, birth, renewal, and spiritual awakening – all swirling in a pagan night forest, where goddesses and witches dance with their familiars, and merge with the Divine. Under a stormy-to-clear sea and sky morphing as one, ruled by the Spirit Guides who watch over us. Using a painterly approach with the materials, and layered hidden imagery, which include: pages from the cruise magazine which my Mom died on last year, and books from my Dad’s when I was clearing out his junk, and other images obsessively collected over the last 5 years.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the opening of the Visions from Mama Cacao and the Earth Goddess exhibition at Urchin Wines , in response to Cacao Ceremonies at The Chamomile Clinic.

August 8th, 2019|

Turner Contemporary

My video piece FEED TROLL premiered at the Double Sided Sticky Tape exhibition at Turner Contemporary
www.turnercontemporary.org/


Curated by Alex Noble
In partnership with Margate Pride

Double lives, inhabited spaces, uninhabitable bodies, inhibitions run riot. Side lined and sensational, sticky, awkward, intimate, recorded and taped.
The kaleidoscopic experience of queerness, the fractals beyond fractals of LGBTQI identity and expressions that smash through stereotypes.
Stereotypes that even within a diverse community serve only to perpetuate heteronormative ideals of gendered social structures that can oppress and segregate.

The Double Sided Sticky Tape exhibition invites artist who present, document, inspire and transcend perceptions of what it is to be LGBTQI today and how they respond as artists to a lived experience and the informing of identity. Expanding audience impressions and understanding of what it is to be gay, transgender, queer, fluid, non binary and the multitude of identities that transcend labels.

The exhibition seeks to give a wider platform to visionaries and voices that are unpredictable, revealing prevalent and other sides of beauty to the usual genres of homoerotic art that have narrow parameters of physical aesthetics, genders and ideals. A physical platform for imagery that largely inhabits an on line space, rewarding artists with a larger scale to present their work through use of projectors, creating a continuous slide show, illuminating the work into a 3D space including performance and textile installation. The exhibition focuses on film, photography, writing and textile artworks that subvert visual codes of dress and gender.

Exhibiting artists include
Bobb Attard / James Barnett / Stav B / Elliot Clausen / Isaac Flores / Arthur Guilleminot / J Houston / Asa Johannesson / Matt Lambert / Roxy Lee / Lunatraktors / Kirsty McKenzie / Lucas Medias / Bernice Mulenga / Jesse Navarre Vos / Alex Noble / Cathal O’Brien / Carlos Pareja / Password_Yeltes / Scott Ramsay Kyle / Marval A Rex / Rosalind Russell / Marija Sabanovic / Adam Sach / Anna Sampson / Robert George Sanders / Paul Sixta / Shaun Stamp / Enzo Tonati / Joseph Wilson

Public view launch on Monday 5th August 17.00 – 20.00
Turner Contemporary is one of the UK’s leading art galleries.
Situated on Margate seafront, on the same site where Turner stayed when visiting the town, Turner Contemporary presents a rolling programme of temporary exhibitions, events and learning opportunities which make intriguing links between historic and contemporary art. The gallery offers a space for everyone to discover different ways of seeing, thinking and learning.

FEED TROLL from Kirsty McKenzie on Vimeo.

#DSST1 @doublesidedstickytape @turnercontemporary @margatepride

August 8th, 2019|
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