Laura Duffy (Aotearoa)
Garden of Purity: Open Your Mouth Wide and I Will Fill It
4K video in 7-channel looping installation, steel.
Laura Duffy’s seven-channel Garden of Purity behaves like a gorgeous feast in a 17th century vanitas painting that has been left to rot. Sweet, luscious surfaces erupt; mould blooms and blossoms; secretions squelch and bubble. The sumptuous foods become sexually charged as they decay, oozing sensually between life and death.
Queering binaries of repulsion and desire, Duffy’s video works complicate an understanding of divinity and of purity. Displayed on a series of angled and skewed monitors like grungy garden plants gone wild, her work tugs at the gut reactions of the viewer.
Laura Duffy is a visual artist based in Pōneke Wellington, who primarily works with experimental video. Duffy’s practise is interested in celebrating queer pleasure or joy derived from failure, error and disgust. (Her current research interests surround queer ecology and futurity). Currently studying towards a MFA at Toi Rauwhārangi, Massey University, Duffy’s work has been exhibited throughout Aotearoa, Australia, China and Japan.
- Dr Chelsea Nicols, Senior Curator, The Dowse
REVIEW OF WORK: https://pantograph-punch.com/posts/candy-coated
1. I AM WITHOUT SHAME, I AM ASHAMED : I AM THE SPEAKING OF MY NAME
2. DO NOT STARE AT ME WHEN I AM THROWN, I AM THE LIMBS OF MY MOTHER
3. YOU WHO DENY ME CONFESS ME : YOU WHO CONFESS ME DENY ME
4. PAY ATTENTION TO ME AM SHE WHO IS DISGRACED AND SHE WHO IS IMPORTANT
5. I AM THE COMING TOGETHER AND THE FALLING APART : I AM THE ENDURING AND THE DISINTEGRATION
6. I APPEAR TO BE LUST BUT INSIDE IS SELF CONTROL
7. I AM WITHOUT SIN AND THE ROOT OF SIN IS WITHIN ME