DEGREE SHOW
Hungry?
This piece encapsulates a disturbed dinner scene in which two diners were eating the most intimate parts of the female body. With the quick exit, gory contents and strange smells this piece hopes to encourage you to question your own consumption of women regardless or gender and sexuality.
The final statement as a contemporary art student. Displayed in City of Glasgow College in May 2025, 'Hungry?' is the final piece for both my third and forth year in university.
In my forth year, I spent a lot of time exploring the female form and language used around it, especially the phrases commonly heard in sexual situations. I had grown a habit of combining the female anatomy and gore in attempt to explore how far I could abstract the body until it becomes un-sexy. When working with props/3D it made sense to physically remove a commonly sexualised object from the body.
I chose to create a breast cast as the breast is so commonly sexualised even while holding no significance to pro-creation or the act of sex. I spent a lot of time perfecting the cast and material I chose to fill it.
The final draft was created from a hand-made mould and filled with strawberry flavoured jelly.
The rest of the contents on the table naturally fell into place after establishing the main event. I collected the plates, glasses, and bottle from my local charity shops to decorate the scene. The table was created from a spare desk in my studio, topped with stained ply wood, and dressed with some spare lace fabric. The chairs were borrowed from the furniture department and returned after the show. I found the rug on facebook marketplace the day of install and bought the paint from my local hardware shop.
It was important to me that everything on display was sources as responsible as possible.
As described, the piece shows a table, two chairs surrounded by blue walls. The table cloth almost ripped from the setting as the imagined diners fled. The table holds two plates, both containing a half-eaten breast, a salt shaker filled with teeth (a call back to a previous exhibitions work), two wine glasses, candles, and a whiskey bottle.
The whiskey bottle was filled with a corn flour based blood and the glasses laced with sticky red slime. The table cloth was littered with blood spatter and the plates overflowing with syrup.
The details of the exhibition engulfed the senses. The sweet strawberry smell from the jelly was paired with Karro syrup based blood mixture I laced with sulphur powder. This resulted in a confusion for the nose and mouth, my hope was that this physical confusion would become thought provoking for the viewer.
My overall aim with this piece was to present the breast so detached from the body, create physical indicators of previous consumption and invite the audience to attempt to sexualise what they saw, hoping they would being to question where this sexualisation comes from and remove the idea that it is provoked or inherently drilled in to the human brain.
The two painting displayed behind the chairs at the scene detail anonymous women with large slits across their skin.
These women were painted in oil on canvas.
The cuts were real jabs taken at the canvas. The blood dripping from the gashes is the karro syrup mix used on the places of the scene. The back if the canvases were re-enforced with clay to maintain the structural integrity of the frame.
I wanted these two women to add another element to the scene. They were created to represent the generational harm this kind of sexualisation and self cannibalism can cause.
For the majority, these paintings were taken as a reference to the source of the meat on the plate but the original idea was to hint at the fact that the mysterious diners could have also been women.
Taking a closer look at the scene you can spot smaller details that indicate this. For example, there were defined lipstick prints on the rim of both wine glasses.
Towards the end of my forth year, I came to understand that the sexualisation of the female body often comes from the person living in that body. While I do not believe that clothing or appears is an invitation or request for being objectified, there is some truth in understanding that many women aid in their own oppression by bending to the male gaze and inviting unhealthy sexual attention (think casual sex, situationships, and "talking stages" that are comfortable enough to ask for nude photos.).
This layer adds more depth to the piece and has a lot more emotional ties to my own experiences.
