︎

Queer Mesh and the Strange Stranger is an ongoing research project, guided by the theoretical framework of queer ecology and ecological thought, that considers the complexity of human and non-human interrelations. This project was born out of a desire to examine the confines of binary thinking, human exceptionalism and the anthropocentric perspective that frames the Natural world; to imagine an entangled mesh of all beings, living and non-living.

The mesh implies an intimacy of everything and everyone, entangled in a messy and fragile web that constitutes strange strangers. The notion of ‘strange stranger’ refers to non-human critters, imagined as ambiguous beings that resist binary categorisation. If the mesh was imagined through the intimacy of the strangest beings which go beyond human comprehension, then perhaps it can be argued that all sorts of seeming impossibilities are possible including the queerness of the mesh. In this mesh, the familiar becomes strange and the strange familiar. To experience it, intimacy and fluidity are encouraged drawing attention to the overlooked, peripheral beings like moss and lichen. They amalgamate with other beings and form clusters of ecosystems that are intertwined on a scale that is both infinite and infinitesimal. In a way, mimicking the symbiotic relationship that lichen forges with fungi, algae and beyond.

Queer Mesh and the Strange Stranger is an expanded installation of animate and inanimate materials, found objects, and scientific equipment. The works are informed by hybrid methodologies of printmaking and alternative photographic processes, queered beyond their conventional etiquette. The transmutation of scientific methods and playful displays are used as tools of subversion to challenge the anthropocentric lens through which the non-human world is seen. Layers of experimental processes on paper form uncanny, new hybrid species; defying binary gender and traditional taxonomy. They are the strange strangers within the queer mesh.

︎︎︎

Untitled (wood frame plinth 1)
45 x 12 x 16 inches
Organic wood, plexiglass, steel pins, pressed organic matter (moth, moss, dead flies, undetermined plant species), wood block
2022

Embossed print study no.1 (The Stranger Strangers)
9 x 11.5 inches
Paper, steel clips, steel wire, steel eye hook screws
2022

︎

Untitled (walled plinth) [detail]
35 x 79 x 67 inches
Acrylic box, desecrated wood, glass, wood block, precision knife, dressing forceps, needle holder, painter’s brush, vintage awl, steel pins, water, petri dish, paper, organic matter (desecrated wood, moss, bee, cockchafer, lichen, fungi, undetermined species)
2022

Untitled (glass column)
55 x 13 x 14.5 inches
Acrylic box, tubular wood, cockle shells, lichen, sea urchin, fossilised rock, snail shell, organic plant matter (undetermined)
2022

Untitled (glass column) [details]
55 x 13 x 14.5 inches
Acrylic box, tubular wood, cockle shells, lichen, sea urchin, fossilised rock, snail shell, organic plant matter (undetermined)
2022

Poly Symbiotic Cell
Dimensions variable
Glass, fossilised rocks, seashells (common limpet, auger, common piddock, periwinkle), moss, red wine, water, flies, mushroom, tubular wood, crab claws, petri dish, cuttlefish bone, lichen, paper, wood blocks, sea detritus (undetermined), whelk eggs, whale intervertebral disc, steel pin, stone
2022

[images 1 - 8]