Feral Objects

Feral Objects is an ongoing project where overlooked and undervalued domestic objects perform as sculpture. These objects have been activated through careful manipulation of the materiality of femininity to disrupt purpose and intention. Shanks are weapons made illicitly by prisoners from everyday objects, most prisons keep a collection of these confiscated weapons as an educational tool for prison wardens. In this series of Kitchen Shanks I imagine women and girls physically or psychically confined to the domestic realm arming themselves against perceived threats of attack or abuse. Like prisoners who utilize objects ready to hand, these kitchen shanks are created from the ephemera of femininity and are presented here as fetish like objects that bear testimony to women’s strategies of domestic resistance. Runaway Objects is a series of small sculptures made from subservient domestic objects – stools, coffee tables, Tupperware containers, rolled cushions and decorative belts – that perform narratives of abscondence, like children who run away from home, pets who stray too far, or like women fleeing domestic violence, social pressure, or drudgery and boredom perhaps. These runaway sculptural objects have seemingly been caught on night vision camera roaming the liminal spaces of urbanity like feral objects haunting the problematic legacy of women’s relationship to the domestic.