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Inherent in the human compulsion for self-representation is a complex mesh of desires hinging upon self-cognisance and acceptance. In Corps, curator Charles Robb assembled a group of artists whose works touch upon contemporary issues of the self, associated with the body.
In tilling this exhibition Corps—literally meaning an organised body of persons and phonetically allied to 'corpse' and 'core'—Robb acknowledges three fundamental ways in which we represent ourselves. Namely, as 'corps' (the self as cog in the wheel of humanity), 'corpse' (the self as externally defined), and 'core' (the essential inner self). Each work included in the show embodied one or more of these concepts.
Body Memory was a collaborative installation by Justin Avery and Courtney Pedersen in which a bed-sheet, impregnated with wax, shrouded a wire reinforced bodycavity set in the foetal position and lit from beneath. Occupying a small room, the work exuded the pungent aroma of honey and rosemary (the herb of remembrance).
Its subdued glow and evocative aroma produced an effect which was both eerie and poignant. Reminiscent of a deathbed scene, it commented upon the fragility of the body and the ephemerality of life. Michelle Reed's I Still Hear Your Voice, a series of five hand-coloured photographic montages in which she superimposed her own image into old family photographs, similarly emphasised boundaries between past and present, life and death—between the presence and absence of the body/self.
Both Laura Bechly's Disseverance and Madeleine Kelly's The Nutcracker took a compartmentalised view of the body. Bechly's work incorporated small pieces of animal-gut and illustrations of human anatomy, delicately fastened with entomological pins to a wax base. The Nutcracker was comprised of packing cases, prosthetic limbs, casts, and