After a month-long residency in the Benham Gallery at Cuckoo Farm Studios in Colchester, the artists created an installation of new work inspired by their recent research and practice. The artists were given the use of the Benham Gallery at Cuckoo Farm Studios in Colchester to develop work begun on their recently completed MA course. Both artists share an interest in notions of identity, and how w
e perceive ourselves and are perceived by others. Experimental work included the casting of their own and others faces in plaster, alginate, slip, wax and latex, and the construction of long banners of text and writings about identity, selfhood, otherness and taxonomy. The work began to coalesce into an installation of scientific glassware in which the specimens, rather than being contained, were hand-engraved on the exterior of the containers, and the interior contained clothing made from textiles covered with text, and - in some cases- embroidered with human hair. These intricate and intimate objects were displayed on a hospital trolley in the centre of the gallery, in which the only lighting came from within the drawers of the trolley. The masks, in their various materials referencing bone, fat, and skin, were mounted around the walls of the space, so that the viewer, while studying the specimens in the centre, would be subliminally aware of being 'observed' by the rows of masks behind them. Ms Temple-Cox has just returned from a US trip, where she undertook research in the Mutter Museum, a medical museum in Philadelphia. Bringing the results of this research back to the studio, she worked alongside Ms Barclay to explore her resource material. Ms Barclay sourced her research closer to home, drawing on archive material from Colchester and Ipswich museums. The themes of both artists’ work revolve around issues of identity. Combining their very different practices, they explore the relationship of self to the physical body using visual and tactile mediums. Both address the self through interpretations of the body, especially the face, as either a medical specimen or within domestic spaces. The representation of the physical and material body, they believe, is the means for many selves to evolve and emerge.
