Cocoons, 2022

Solo Exhibition, Abstract Thoughts Gallery

This exhibition focuses on the body as a site of refuge. Through performance-based drawing and painting, Rachel uses bodily form, movement and gesture as a way of marking time and space.

To withdraw and seek refuge, as Gaston Bachelard puts it, is a way to daydream. It can be a process of renewal and transformation. I began this body of work not long after the most severe stages of the pandemic, and for me it visualises the way in which we were forced to turn inward. The works use the physical body to create imaginary spaces; portals into the internal subconscious. A dialogue takes place between body and mind; the body is drawn inward and the mind mirrors this state. 

Each painting inhabits a human scale, yet, when hung vertically, occupies an otherworldly space that seems to transcend the physical proportions of the physical body. The impressions, memories, thoughts, fears and dreams that the body contains are reduced to simple yet expressive gestures of line; fluid, perpetually changing, eternal. A fossilisation of continuous movement, each work becomes a record of a passing state – a series of performances frozen in time.