Josephine Pryde

These images are from a series called “Embryos and Estate Agents: L’Arte de Vivre,” that Josephine Pryde presented at Chisenhale. In this body of work, Pryde created images from medical fetuses and desert landscapes, coupled with portraits of young women in moments of unrest and reflection. Karen Archey states of Josephine Pryde's work that "beyond Pryde's fascinating material practice is her confrontation of oft-taboo, extremely personal, female-specific issues generally elided in contemporary art discourse."

Keren Cytter

Jessie Stead

Pearl C. Hsiung

Brian Bress

Ann Liv Young

Ronnie Bass

Cecilia Dougherty

Gone from Cecilia Dougherty on Vimeo.

Production Shots of Punk Club

Punk Club Stills - Video by Vanessa Gully Santiago

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This was a video shoot I did with the bands EULA from Brooklyn, Cousin Brian from Philadelphia and Surfing from Harrisonburg. I designed this installation and included photographs by Lizz Wells on the back wall, behind the couch.

Daniel Handal

These photographs are part of a documentary series on the practice of “female masking,” in which individuals, predominantly men, put on women’s fetish wear and a latex mask in order to transform themselves into living dolls. Members of the masking community create multi-layered alter egos and assume fictional characters while documenting their role playing with photographs and sharing stories on community blogs. These living dolls evoke for me the age-old stories of the inanimate creature come to life – Pygmalion’s Galatea, Gepetto’s Pinocchio and the androids of science fiction – with the twist that here the creator is also the creation. The photographs are not meant to be sexual, although some find them provocative and strange. In this series, I am primarly interested in capturing what seems to be a parallel world – a theatrical, artificial reality brought to life by the camera.

Bruce Nauman

Naumann selected clowns as a metaphor in several video pieces. "Clown Torture" (1987) was a video piece featuring "the hoarse voice of Naumann, dressed as a clown , in a baggy suit of vertical stripes that slyly recalls the garb of concentration-camp prisoners, shrieking, 'No, no, no, nonono!' while writhing and jerking on the floor," wrote Hughes in Time. His obsession with clown imagery in the 1980s drew comparisons to author Samuel Beckett. This prompted a show in 2000 called "SAMUEL BECKETT/BRUCE NAUMAN." In his critique of the exhibition in Artforum International, Daniel Birnbaum said the connection between the two men was "exemplary. No other contemporary artist has worked so intensively with repetitions that turn the minor absurdities of the everyday into something unendurable."

Jack Smith

Smith was one of the first proponents of the aesthetics which came to be known as 'camp' and 'trash', using no-budget means of production (e.g. using discarded color reversal film stock) to create a visual cosmos heavily influenced by Hollywood kitsch, orientalism and with Flaming Creatures created drag culture as it is currently known. Smith was heavily involved with John Vaccaro, founder of The Playhouse of The Ridiculous, whose disregard for conventional theater practice deeply influenced Smith's ideas about performance art. In turn, Vaccaro was deeply influenced by Smith's aesthetics. It was Vaccaro who introduced Smith to glitter and in 1966 and 1967, Smith created costumes for Vaccaro's Playhouse of The Ridiculous. Smith's style influenced the film work of Andy Warhol as well as the early work of John Waters. While all three were part of the 1960s gay arts movement, Vaccaro and Smith refuted the idea that their sexual orientation was responsible for their art.

Leigh Ledare