Lauren Kelly

My work investigates the power of the fetish, the anthropomorphic, the abject and hints at organic and bodily properties. I am interested in the immediate encounter we have with objects both haptically and spatially, what we project on to an inanimate object, the sense of presence it has in the space, its own material ontology and what is received by the senses to constitute its objectness. Much of the work flirts with ideas of fertility and fecundity and the twinning or doubling of forms amplifies the transgressive symmetry that alludes to the body. I find that where the work plays with opposites lies the tension. Where welded steel structures add a functional rawness and nakedness that heightens the softer cosmetic palette of pinks, ivories and flesh tones. A kind of dressed and undressed. There are undercurrents in the work that create uncertainty. Beneath the veneer there is a ritualistic disembowelling that is sacrificial and almost cannibalistic, raising the questions of which part is the predator and which is the prey? Depending on the presence a sculpture emits, it can often take on a gender, they become ‘beings’, not always human, not always animal but a personified living thing nonetheless with a character of its own.