City Rat "From Womb to Tomb" Exhibition Catalogue

Alex Benecki, Ava Brimilcombe, Ceri Bythesea, Charlotte Cole, Elisa Conlan, Libby Entwistle, Mirrored Fatality, Niamh Finnigan, Ester Forse, Michael Gao, Sebastian Holbrey, Georgie Inchbald, Tom Kasterine, Lucy Kitchin, Maciek Kosc, Alex Langlois, Vasilisa Litvinenko, Junyi Lu, Lauren Maclean, Amelia Morgan, Izzy Osborn, Beatrice Parks, Connor Scott, Moira Semel, Sophia Siersted, Fiona Storm, Arley Stuffins, Devon Tabata, Ella Williamson, D an i e lYa n e z- C u n n i n g h a m

From Womb to Tomb 24-26th February 2023 Cataloue Design: Ella Williamson @ellarwilliamson

Alex Benecki, Ava Brimilcombe, Ceri Bythesea, Charlotte Cole, Elisa Conlan, Libby Entwistle, Mirrored Fatality, Niamh Finnigan, Ester Forse, Michael Gao, Sebastian Holbrey, Georgie Inchbald, Tom Kasterine, Lucy Kitchin, Maciek Kosc, Alex Langlois, Vasilisa Litvinenko, Junyi Lu, Lauren Maclean, Amelia Morgan, Izzy Osborn, Beatrice Parks, Connor Scott, Moira Semel, Sophia Siersted, Fiona Storm, Arley Stuffins, Devon Tabata, Ella Williamson, D an i e lYa n e z- C u n n i n g h a m

Alex Benecki I Suffer, Without Knowing If I Deserve To, 2023.

Steel, plexiglass, paraffin, silver gelatin paper.

63 x 45 cm

Alex Benecki is a multi-media artist working primarily in photography, sound, video, and sculpture. His practice is generally concerned with giving form to fear, exploring mortality, identity, the body, often through the lens of his own personal experiences. His work aims to create self-contained worlds which are linked sonically and visually through texture and materiality, something the artist has an instinctive eye for, whether it be through his use of alternative black and white printing processes, his approach to manipulating sound, or through the choice of materials in his sculptures.

His work, "I suffer, without knowing if I deserve to", is closely related to the exhibition's theme, "From Womb to Tomb", as it explores the impact of Catholic teachings and practices on the artist, especially relating to his development of OCD later in his life. This work closely examines identity, and in a sense, the passing of who the artist once was, linking it to themes of transformation and death.

Ava Brimilcombe Untitled, 2023 Oil & Acrylic On Canvas 100 X 100 Cm

Lately in my practice I have found myself questioning the relationship I have with my body and it's function, and how much this is impacted by the way I feel I am percieved by men. I desire them and want them to desire me, I am also constantly aware of their power over me and my power over them. Realising how much the presence of men dictates how I live my life has made me re-think and over-think everything I do.

In my paintings I use my own body and bedroom to try to convey some of the conflicting emotions I feel when alone with a man; whether that's a manager in his office or someone I have invited into my bedroom.

Ceri Bythesea There Are No Words, 2023 Film 30:25

Ceri Bythesea (he/him) is a film maker and sound artist currently based in North Lincolnshire.

There Are Now Words was made specifically the this event, inspired by the From Womb to Tomb prompt - a meditation on the mundane repetition of life which masks changing perspectives and our inescapable degradation.

Video footage was captured over two days travelling from green expanse to urban sprawl and back again - with the audio created using the no-input process; a four channel mixer creating an ouroboros of feedback beaten into submission by analogue effect units.

Charlotte Cole. Georgie Inchbald, Devon Tabata Gloaming Explorations Print and Film Each 29.4 x 42 cm 04:13

Our project proposes a reinhabition of the recently abandoned Scottish Widows HQ in Edinburgh (designed

by Sir Basil Spence’s studio).

Our work explores notions of ‘gloaming’ (a Scottish word for twilight/ dusk) through small scale interventions in the dark, empty space. We aim to introduce some humanity into this corporate machine, constructing beacons of soft light and delicate material that guide and enclose. Site soundings and acoustic studies inform their location, the rippling lines delineating new territories.

In this way, the building’s tone shifts from abandoned ‘tomb’ to a ‘womb’ for the city.

Elisa Conlan Passing, 2022 Diptych, Oil on Canvas Each 60 x 60 cm

Elisa Conlan Mookid, 2022 Oil on Canvas 100 x 100 cm

Elisa Conlan is an artist working predominantly in oil painting. Representation of the body is central to their practise, exploring what it symbolises and subverting its orthodox portrayals. Their current work explores ideas surrounding constant surveillance and the subsequent self-surveillance that follows. Additionally, overstimulation of contemporary life, and the anxiety this causes, are explored in visual language through distortion, vibrancy, and a varied colour palette. The innate grotesque nature of the body is a returning point of interest, this is often through a gendered perspective. Their work aims to challenge notions of certain bodies being perceived as shocking.

Body politics and autonomy are recurrent themes investigated through visceral, active, and violent brushwork. They intend to deconstruct the hierarchy of visual language in the tradition of painting by taking influence from everyday images, for example album covers. This range of painterly influences has enabled them to create an aesthetic world built around visual niches ranging from classical painting to pop culture.

Their work, Passing, 2022, and Mookid, 2022, relates to the exhibition’s theme ‘From Womb to Tomb,’ as it is concerned with both the autonomy of the womb and the paradox of the beautiful/ grotesque nature of mundane life.

Libby Entwistle The Corporate Sea Monster, 2023 Oil on Canvas 80 x 120 cm

Libby Entwistle I’m an Average Citizen, Get me Out of Here! 2022 Poster Prints Each 29.7 x 21 cm

‘If one is a woman, one is often surprised by a sudden splitting of consciousness… when from being the natural inheritor of that civilisation, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical.’

Virginia Woolf in ‘A Room of One’s Own’

Libby Entwistle is an artist who explores human intention through narrative structures. She intends to induce stimulation and energies through social investigations within visual communication. She cares for aesthetic purpose, although the synchronicities in her works stem from an investigative means rather than a focus on one medium. In order to achieve her ideal outcome, she faces much critical self-reflection, coming from specifically the roots of phenomenology, which can be found in her most recent film, ‘I’m an Average Citizen, Get me Out of Here!’: ‘Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.’ Marshall McLaughan, ’The Medium is the Massage’.

On the 8th of November 2022, Matt Hancock went onto the popularised British reality TV show, ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of Here!’. The Conservative politician, known for breaking Covid laws whilst being the Secretary of State for Health (in a few ways, namely by having an affair) was her source of inspiration and investigation. She made 50 variations of posters, exploring natural hypocrisies found within our societal structures like nepotism, gossiping and notions of old versus new money with a comedic and colloquial tone.

The works, displayed within the theme of ‘womb to tomb’, point out the mundane banality and repetitive course of life under the constrains of western capitalism. Her painting, The Corporate Sea Monster works is a still from her short film, drawing out the sinister underbelly of the films comedic premise.

Mirrored Fatality VALE, 2022 Film 03:21

We hiked a bridge to nowhere and at the end were metal locks scratched with names to symbolize eternal love. We gazed at a vale in the middle of forest mountains with a river vortex flowing to nourish the four corners of the farming town: Negra (so-called Blanca), Murcia, Spain with its abundant lemons, grapes, olives, and oranges. Down below were dogs, baby sharks, ducks, butterflies, and murmurations.

VALE is a tale honoring the world building created when moments of reciprocal, trusting, and sacred love for our lovers and the lands we protect & steward are prioritized and fought for.

VALE contains field recordings of our immersion during our residency at Centro Negra with AADK Spain: the church bell that rings every hour, the 2022 New Years countdown, parades, farms, climbing the top of Valle de Ricote, and the industrial dam at the center of Negra. *** the valley opens when two mountains kiss and erupt saliva in four directions. we are lovers and our slime erodes barriers. we build shrines in our eyes and offer ribs onto altars. in soaked beds, we are harvesting an undoing of what once was. the world regenerates.

Niamh Finnigan Granddaddy Purple Sculpture 12 x 7 cm

I associate the phrase ‘from womb to tomb’ as the process of continuing through life. The idea that you just live and die without having enough genuine connections or experiences is a fear of mine.

This piece is exploring the feeling of being ‘inanimate’ and not being an active participant in your own life. The feeling of being so reliant on unhealthy coping mechanisms that you are just wasting away, melting into your bed.

For me this was a caricature of this sort of situation, referencing a second hand experience witnessing an ex-partner.

Despite this piece having a underlying narrative that surrounds a depressing environment, it reflects a light hearted approach on the subject.

Humour is a tool I often use through out my work but I find it to be most effective in works that juxtapose with more serious topics. Art will always be personal and emotionally driven but it can still ‘take the piss’.

Esther Forse Postcards from Utopia, 2023 Oil on Aluminium 21 x 29 cm

My practise currently explores world-building, haunting, and liminal spaces- this ongoing series of paintings is conceived as a collection of views and objects from the same fictional place or alternate reality, a sort of fragmentary Utopia that is constantly under construction. The theme of ‘From Womb to Tomb’ links to this idea of a journey, of wandering around a place or haunting it like a ghost, and then making paintings which act as fieldnotes, or postcards that I’m sending back home.

Esther Forse Sky Blue, 2022 Oil on Aluminium 19 x 25.4 cm

Michael Gao Daddy Long Legs, 2023 Acrylic on Linen Canvas 60 x 50 cm

Michael Gao Stratosphere Dandy, 2023 Acrylic on Canvas 21x14 cm

Sebstian Holbrey Woman, 2023 Oil Paint, Chalk, Oil Pastel, Crayon On Canvas Bordered By Ribbon 61x61 cm

The visuals in this painting were inspired by tales of both Daphne and Ophelia, women of demise by the hand of men. The woman featured is designed to suggest a god-like position, with angel wings, and being accompanied by the Eye of Horus , which symbolises protection. Despite this, she is hunted by a leopard, who can be interpreted as man, just just as a gender, but as a wider form of oppressive human force. This image was designed to explore the position of women as a creator of life, a godlike ability, despite the fight society makes for them to exist comfortably as women.

Tom Kasterine Stars & Hands Screenprint on Paper 42 x 59.4 cm In the Catholic Church, a 'Requiem' is a mass for the dead. Initially the idea behind this project was the mourning of our ancestors, but in the context of our current climate crisis, the roles have now switched, the souls of our ancestors are now mourning for our fate.

Tom Kasterine Requiem Screenprint on Fabric Various Sizes

Lucy Kitchin Untitled, 2023 Oil on Wood 20.3 x 15.5cm

My current painting practice is concerned with the transformation of human to object via distortion.

Through this process the figures in my paintings become living objects, embodiments of femininity and the abjectness of a corpse.

Lucy Kitchin Untitled, 2022 Oil on Wood 30 x 30 cm

Maciek Kosc Tell The Nice Toys You're Not Dead, 2023 Acrylic and Oil on Linen Canvas 60 x 50 cm

Lauren Maclean Untitled, 2022 Etched Copper Sheets Each 21 x 29.7 cm

Amelia Morgan Undead Rainforest Acrylic on Canvas 20 x 25 cm

Junyi Lu Chick Painting 1, 2023 Acrylic, Crayon, Pencil And Sewing On Canvas 21 x 31 cm

Junyi Lu Chick Painting 4, 2023 Acrylic, oil, crayon and pencil on canvas with foam frame 71.2 x 66.2 cm

Junyi Lu was born in Guangzhou, China in 1996. She is currently in the final year of her MFA programme at the Slade School of Fine Art. Her practice focuses on the correlation among entities perceived through her living experiences as well as research in ecotheory, socioeconomic politics, and the flux of social information in folklores and the contemporary digital realms.

Her series Chick Paintings is an emotional response to the theme "from womb to tomb" inspired by a past social phenomenon in China in the early 2000s. At the time, chicks were popular as pets among children. They were sold in piles in cardboard boxes along the streets. They were usually bred in mass quantities, kept in poor conditions, and sold for low prices.

Children loved them because they were cute, but they usually would not survive for long.

As a kid, Junyi found an injured chick in the stairway. She took it and built a house made out of foam jigsaw mats for it. The chick died shortly but her parents concealed the news until recent years, so she had always believed that it escaped for adventures. Somehow, the image of an injured chick inside a man-made house became a recurring image for her and inspired the series of paintings.

Izzy Osborn Empty Your Pockets Laser Prints Each 42 x 59.4

My practice allows viewers to reflect critically on their own notions of the art world and education. As education is a universal experience of life, I believe it the work will relate to the theme and resonate with participants.

The piece, entitled “empty your pockets”, is from an ongoing processbased work consisting of a series of worksheets. These worksheets are designed in the style of camp 70s educational material. They subvert the source material they are based off however, by posing questions which ask the viewer to challenge their concepts of the art world. These worksheets are distributed around the Edinburgh College of Art, inviting participants to fill them out. These completed worksheets have then been scanned in and blown up to A2, to present the audience’s answers back to them, and establish a conversation between the piece and the participants. The works are exhibited alongside blank copies of the worksheets that the exhibition-goers can fill out whilst looking at the work.

Beatrice Parks Untitled, 2023 Ink on Paper Each 42 x 29.7 cm

Beatrice Parkes is a painter who explores the themes of feminism, and sexual liberation. Working predominantly within the medium of acrylic paint, she uses a bold application of colour to express unapologetic alien like figures. Throughout the presented works she has removed this element, by limiting the works to black ink to focus on shape, line and movement. The series of drawings addresses the theme through the power of the female form. Providing focus to the relation between the movement of the body within dance and subsequently the movement of the brushstrokes.

Connor Scott Untitled, 2023 Solvent Transfer, Acrylic and Ink on Paper Each 14.8 x 21 cm

At the minute, my practice is focussing on using found materials that could be considered trashy ordiscarded, to make a sort of pin board of absurd imagery we are presented with in daily life.

I initially tried to do this with collage, but I’ve now moved into the area of solvent transfer.

To make these works I use whatever printed material I can get my hands on: leaflets, mags, comics, maps, posters, etc.

With these particular works I was trying to evoke the sense of clutter that we experience so frequently in a material obsessed society, by repurposing and distorting images from variety of different sources.

These works in a way serve as a snapshot of the clutter we trawl through on our way from The Womb to The Tomb.

Sophia Siersted My Tummy Hurts Acrylic And Oil Pastel On Board 150 x 100 cm My artwork is part of an ongoing series that centres around the theme of ‘healthcare failing women’. My work attempts to show the repercussions of poor and inadequate medical treatment offered to women and how psychological damaging it can be to repeatedly seek for help. This painting shows a hospital ward and the eeriness that is often felt.

Moira Semel Untitled, 2023 Animation 00:10

Arley Stuffins Untitled Textiles, Reworked Trousers and Shirt Various Sizes

Ella Williamson Cash Money Screenprint on Paper Each 13.9 x 7.3 cm “We don’t trust the stranger, we trust the money they hold” This series of work by artist and designer Ella Williamson (b.2001, London) focuses on the value of British currency and the impact it has at home, and throughout the larger world.

Within the work, Williamson responds to themes of colonialism, celebrity, and monarchy in an amalgamation of various artistic forms and structures.

With the comedic elements she introduces, the punchiness of her design and the acuity of her political voice, Williamson creates work that stands as an observation of a time when the British regime is being questioned, now more than ever.

Ella Williamon, Tom Kasterine Rejected Posters Laser Print on Paper Each 59.4 x 42 cm

Daniel Yanez Cunningham, Vasilisa Litvinenko, Alex Langlois [DVA] Print and Film Each 29.7 x 42 cm

Our project investigates the Scottish Widows Building as a site of physical and symbolic decay, questioning how structural interventions can re-animate a space characterised by a sense of numbness. The deteriorating office building reveals its history through carpet marks, seeping mould and collections of old cardboard boxes littered across the massive, empty floors. The only elements disturbing the emptiness of the space are moments of vertical disruption: a ripped-up carpet or a ceiling board crumbling onto the floor.

Taking these micro-movements and applying them at a massive scale, we begin to break up the strict horizontality of each floor through vertical manipulations, capturing the dynamism of sound and movement produced and introducing novel opportunities in re-navigating the building through sounds’ energising, spatiotemporal qualities.

Our haptic approach embraces the human sensitivity necessary in a successful building and evidences the animating role of the visitor in a building of physical and programmatic degradation.

Our video project straddles between two and threedimensionality, bringing to the forefront the importance of our highly-sectional exploration of the structure in question.

The drawing expresses this using a more conventional drawn approach. By projecting our physical experimentation over this drawing, we make clear how our experiential understanding of the building has developed into a formalised architectural intervention.