Written Proposal

A description of the artworks and concept for your exhibition.

Leave Now! Run bitch! You’ve gotta leave the graveyard!

Drawing on personal experience, ‘What Remains’ explores the urge to escape a lingering, foreboding presence by unearthing cemetery symbolism, escapology, and Victorian spiritualism as manifestations of anxiety that drive a desire for control in the face of mortality. To critically examine contemporary Western approaches to dying, mental health and queer identity, we will haunt the gallery with lead-light sculptures, possess ceramics with video projections and Frankenstein painting and prop-making together.

‘What Remains’ brings together common research interests surrounding death, theatre, and fantasy within Neve and Emma’s narrative-based practices through a shared methodology of utilising art-making to think through difficult topics. While topics such as death are often chronically avoided or approached with nervous distance, ‘What Remains’ dares to peek behind the curtain, inviting discourse around individual anxieties through humour and absurdism.

Imbued with horror and magic, ’What Remains’s’ ambitious installation of new work, developed through bold material investigation, invokes 19th-century symbolism and spiritualism to explore the complex, often paradoxical ways we respond to death. Drawing parallels between the Victorian era and the present, together, Neve and Emma use absurdism and camp to approach death, sexuality and art a bit less seriously.

Your ideas for how the artworks will be presented and installed within the space.

The gallery is dispersed with headstones and paintings on ceramic stands, creating a winding maze for viewers to navigate while looping videos play from two CRTs. Neve’s horror film blends rural landscapes with fantastical elements, drawing viewers into a haunting yet strangely familiar world. This film is accompanied by ambient sound, punctuated by sound effects from Emma’s absurd animation. A lightweight, large-scale, collage-based painting is suspended in the gallery’s centre with paintings, screen-printed glass, and lead-light adorning the walls. Through theatrical lighting and dramatic shadows, this installation parallels a spooky Victorian seance.

A brief explanation of why you are interested in exhibiting at The Condensery.

We are interested in drawing out the claustrophobic, grave-like qualities of the Bomb Shelter exhibition space to create a unique, immersive exhibition.