Solo commission
Woodend Gallery, Crescent Arts, Scarborough, UK.
Sep 2023 – Mar 2024
Supported by Scarborough Museum Trust, Arts Council England, and Heritage Lottery Fund.
Cheeky Felicia presented a collection of works that explore abstract and formal relationships to queer identity, readings, and the queering of space, form and materials. Activated by an invitation to respond to the Museums collections, Gratrix took influence from a William Etty painting titled Man Lying Face Down (1820). The figurative becam embodied throughout seemingly abstract forms and actions such as kneeling, rubbing, walking, pulling and tilting. The faceless figure in Etty’s painting is interpreted across an installation that reveals and conceals in nature, experience, exposure, anonymity and orientation.
The experience of engaging with art in a gallery context becomes similar to that of a cruising ground. Both desirable and deviant in what they offer. A chance to expose oneself to new experiences.
