Ontogenesis

TugboatMixed media on wood

Tugboat is a contemporary transcription of George Bellows's Men of the Docks. Bellows's painting depicts men seeking work on the docks in the early twentieth century. I was drawn to the composition of the male figures and to the phallic forms created by the steam liner, tugboat and upright structures in the background. In reworking the image, I shift the docks from a public site of labour and masculine industry towards their less visible histories as places of sex work, cruising and encounters between men. The work brings these readings together: the socially sanctioned performance of working masculinity, and the desires that could exist alongside it, concealed from public view.

Voyeur's TriptychMixed media painting

Voyeur's Triptych is a mixed-media painting inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film Querelle. Drawing on the charged atmosphere of male desire, secrecy and surveillance, the work considers closeted relationships and the tension between wanting to look and fearing exposure. Its three sections fold away from the wall, operating simultaneously as image, screen and barrier. Some painted fragments are offered openly while others retreat into the folds, meaning the work can never be seen completely from one position. Visibility becomes conditional: the viewer must move, search and participate in the same negotiation between revelation and concealment experienced by the men represented.