The objects in Beasts of Intimacy’s Burden recline at the cross-section of wounded desire and lavish materiality. Their lustrous surface a facade that conceals their structural weakness and an ephemeral disposition. As assemblages of Baroque sensibilities, fetish labour and contemporary sexuality they are chimeras. Some think they are furnishings, some sex toys and others architectural surfaces. Between them, they might have different opinions of themselves but share the distinct sentiment of aniconic vehicles for erotic lack.
Anastasia Booth’s practice playfully interrogates art’s erotic potential, particularly as impotent or ironic substitution. In a world that tightly controls acceptable feminine desire, she explores preconceptions of female sexuality in cultural production and symbolic discourse. Drawing on a material lexicon from fetishism and art history, she employs strategies of appropriation and humour to explore how the artist internalises normative narratives as a practitioner and as a sexed subject, and how these initial gestures can be mapped out in terms of agency.
Anastasia’s practice approach is marked by a particular interest in the procedures of sculpture and performance as ways of manifesting highly erotic forms inoperable; to tease the slippage between expectations of the real and desirous simulation.
Booth’s work has been exhibited nationally, including projects at the Institute of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Queensland Art Gallery, Milani Gallery CARPARK, BUS Projects, Screen Space, and was artist in residence at Metro Arts and Outer Space.
This event takes place on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people. Sovereignty over these lands has never been ceded.
