Species-Specious
2018
Questions arising from enquiries into identity, Instinctive responses and learnt behaviours, led to my use of the recurring motif of fur. Focusing on its potential to symbolise an embodied emotional state, by hinting at the intersection between defence and vulnerability. I was inspired to create a fur pelt made of pins, which here I use as a photographic device enabling a staging of the concepts of social perception and self reflection; the single eye of the pin-hole camera facing the many points that make up the piece. Thus engaging considerations about states of apprehension and anxiety in relation to the private individual and social being.
The turn of phrase to ‘pin something down’ means to grasp something in its entirety. Use of the pins to form a pelt, left the pins free at their points to dance and quiver and reflect the light, effectively eluding to the complexity of the individual. The pins were also of interest in relation to the use I’ve been making of dressmakers tools as a way of interrogating identities and the ‘signifiers’ we wear as a means of social acceptance, selection and exclusion.
