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Confronting the Corporeal


Collection: Gray's School of Art Fine Art Collection
Object Type: film
Artist/Maker: Morrison, Elsbeth
Date: 2018
Awards: RGU Contemporary Art Practice Purchase Award
Classification: Contemporary Art Practice

Description:

Confronting the Corporeal

Euphemised, distasteful, feared: death is inevitable yet somehow we’ve distanced ourselves from its processes to the point of denial. Working primarily with the moving image, my work seeks to challenge our relationship to the macabre, by prompting confrontations with the corporeal. Pairing the versatility and richness of film with vivid, textured soundscapes, I aim to submerge the viewer in an unnerving and intimate environment. This creates a space to examine and reconsider attitudes towards the macabre, enabling us to confront and communicate our fears, and normalise the inevitable. Drawing on themes of the morbid, grotesque and uncanny, this series of films confronts the visceral aspects of decay, and evokes the unnerving tensions underlying our confrontations with the body and death. Frequently drawing upon the material aspects of living and decomposing flesh, and juxtaposing high contrast black and white footage with intense colour, these films encourage an exploration of our discomfort with the natural processes of decay. Although separate works, each film’s relationship to one another becomes integral to the body of work as a whole, encouraging you to consider and embrace the impermanence of the body, and of life itself.


Object Number: ABDRG2018.521