Damaris Athene

Kiln formed glass, mirror glass, fabric, polyester fibre, foam nuggets, foam, wood, MDF, chicken wire and acrylic paint

Sculpture 82cm x 92cm x 40cm     

The ‘Fruiting_Bodies’ series explores what form future bodies could take. Works sit between the human and non-human, digital and physical, organic and synthetic, soft and hard, flesh and rock, painting and sculpture. Airbrushed fabric bulges out and pinches in creating orifices. Paint is layered over shadows cast by undulations in the fabric, disrupting a clear reading of the form as 2D or 3D. Areas of the soft sculpture rot like an apple with brown, orange and green hues. Glass domes erupt out of folds of soft synthetic flesh, the colours in the glass seeping out into their surroundings like an infection or healing force. These domes could be portals, alien eggs, tumours or microcosms in their own right. Parasitic bodily forms grow on their hosts like fungi, beautiful but unnerving. They threaten to move when you’re not looking.