Once More With Feeling features new and existing works by Karen Black, Georgia Spain, Cybele Cox and Michelle Ussher.
The exhibition sets out to investigate the articulation of bodies, the relationship between the human form and culture, femininity, sexuality, theatre and ritual. Predominantly traversing sculpture, painting and sound, there is a quest to represent and challenge understandings of femininity - particularly the shapes, expressions and actions that are associated with female bodies.
These artists do not fetishise the rituals of others, they are interested in bodies that look and feel like their own. Simultaneously, there is an urgency to revisit the women of Western mythologies and art history. This exhibition invites us to explore what femininity might mean in a spiritually engaged society. Through the featured artworks, experiments with themes of occultism and theatre allow the body to be reexamined in this collaborative arena. An embodied theatricality is at the core of the artworks.
The four artists are celebrated for their perception, exposing the locations and moments in which mundane behaviours and movements blend into and expose the face of modern ritual.
Image: Karen Black, Song Without Words, 2023.