Eileen Coll, Cauldron, Installation View, PERIPHERIES Centre, 2015
“He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.”
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
In collaboration with the artist PERIPHERIES presents a diverse selection of both existing and new work in the form of an intriguing prospective, teasing out future observations of the artists practice.
BONES presents a mix of installation, video and photography that centres itself around the core of Coll’s practice while challenging the viewers perception of comfort and discomfort. Coll achieves this by making central to her practice an exploratory investigation into the human condition; primarily emotional conditions of vulnerability and angst. However her work goes way beyond the personal, they simultaneously address the world and the person engaging with them. While the hide themselves away in abject deformation, under contorted blankets of skin and bones, they reach out and firmly hold the viewer’s gaze.
Coll primarily works with animal skin and chemicals in an intensive labour of processing, manipulating and molding these materials into new forms or even new ‘bodies’. When exhibited these new ‘bodies’ take on the role of a porous interface to both the interior and exterior worlds. While they confront the audience with what might possibly be considered one of the darkest depths of the human condition, Coll’s work simultaneously instills intense and emotive responses of compassion and empathy; a call to possibly share in the torment?