Kim Deakins
Region: South
My drawings employ rituals, costume, myth, and consumer products as viable readymades to be utilized in the assembly of images. The results play witness to a variety of cultural/historical elements stripped bare of disunion, co-existing in the same picture, with an uncanny sense of harmony. I often work from the subconscious and indulge in sudden urges without the interruption of an intellectual justification. This process allows the pictures to become documents of a visual acculturation of the subconscious, enabled not only by an immediacy of information and imagery but by a willingness to permit these Dada-esque whims to become valid and celebratory visual occasions. ‘Celebratory’ is a key word in my work, as the glittering cast of characters engage in behaviors separated from any specific setting. They dance, screw, posture themselves, launch cassette tapes and diamonds from their butts. Their bizarre empathy asks: Where is our culture located? Where are we going? Where have we been?
They’re also really fun to make.