Field Notes β’ ππ‘ππππ
feat. Pat Brassington
What does it matter whether it is a cry of pain, or pleasure, when the things that love us also hurt us?
Brassingtonβs art deals explicitly in unease. It rests on the point of your nerve that is both exquisite and raw. These are photographs that grab at the ribs; those moments of dormant desire, unrelinquished want, old wounds that still feel fresh.
I feel their constant discomfort within myself, the unsettling void of all the experiences I was ill-equipped to deal with, feelings that were overwhelming. Their every violating second.
Born from the nethers of the subconscious, Brassingtonβs work is intuitively felt but finely crafted. She was an early adopter of digital post-processing, collaging real and manipulated elements to create pixellated images that catalogue these sensations in blacks, whites and pinks.
Seen on the wall, you feel how it draws from deep reservoirs of violence and desire. The turmoil of the subconscious and the uncanny. Brassington has studied psychoanalysis, not to inform the work but to better know itβ¦ There is a fascination with the felt sense. Sheβs a photographer whose pieces land like fragments of a dream, remnants of a trip. Your most sexualised internal horror.
Sheβs funny with it too, with a wry sense of humour that might turn a hat into a cunt.
β¦
Strike (2022) is a standout I experienced recently; a stalactite of ambiguous flesh, cut and proud.
Brassington refers to the shade of pink she uses βΒ sickly, unsettling, fleshly βΒ as a colour that smothers.
Something about experiencing this work in a white cube gallery feels wrong; too clean, too staid. One should be digging these photos up with bare hands from the dirt; they should be discovered in filthy backrooms and corridors in old theatres, hidden behind chandeliers and curtains; they are the last inheritance passed down from a forgotten relative whose screams still penetrate every layer of skin.
Brassingtonβs work unnerves me. I canβt get enough of it.
She reminds me that the potent energy of the erotic can destroy as well as create, that we remain mysteries to ourselves. That encountering the uncanny reveals how little our consciousness truly represents us. Here, its best effort: low-res, processed, digitised. A facsimile of a real being.
The feelings I thought I could suppress have desaturated every colour.
When the curtain is drawn back, the clever thoughts that obscured the mess are shown to be just a charade.
I am revealed in all my hope and trauma.
I am the dismembered limb that is both pleasure and pain.
I am the cut and the knife.
Hurt and glorious.
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Field Notes are not art criticism in any traditional sense, but associative writing based around the experience the work inspires. ULTRA is open to submissions.
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