KIERAN BRYANT & SAMUEL HODGE

’THE SMUSHING’
3 JUNE – 10 JULY 2021

Image: Kieran Bryant and Samuel Hodge, promo image 2020 by us, 2020. Surreal digital image collage. Two flat organic purple shapes with pink & white. Distorted black & white image of a woman wearing a stethoscope screaming. — Kieran Bryant and Samuel Hodge, *promo image 2020 by us*, 2020, digital still. Image courtesy of the artists.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Have fun. Bring joy.

"it's just so nice to make a show. Just make a show"

If we stare at each other hard enough then the ideas flow ~~

Like meltwater from a stone heart

I'm not sure about that ---- it makes sense for you

puddles in puddles - pools of fun

Don't step or do step!

A gritty slurry

- The Kieran Bryant story

“The Smushing” is a relief. With this exhibition the artists’ work with elements from their individual practices that they haven't taken to term or have been underutilised. They do this, in the hope, that they can finally flesh this out together.

A porridge. The consistency must be like porridge.

--

I don't know about that

these beads are my select

FUN the show's going to be FUN

A sandwich of thoughts

Slap some pastrami on it and go

The way the light will hit the crystals

- fabulous!

like that candle holder from beauty & the beast

Image: Installation view, Kieran Bryant and Samuel Hodge, The Smushing #10-12, 2021. Three pastel floor sculptures, Flat and silicone textured with cell diagrams and cursive text. Middle sculpture has 5 thin lit cake candles. — Kieran Bryant and Samuel Hodge, *The Smushing* #10, plaster, glue, dye, dimensions variable, 2021.
*The Smushing* #11, plaster, glue, dye, candles, dimensions variable, 2021.
*The Smushing* #12, plaster, glue, dye, dimensions variable, 2021. Photography by Zan Wimberley.

Image: Kieran Bryant and Samuel Hodge, The Smushing #8-9, 2021. Left: Organic lattice of marbled light and dark blue plaster. Right: Dark blue square hung via eyelets with pastel pink, orange, yellow & blue textured drawings.

The Smushing, a new collaborative project between Kieran Bryant and Samuel Hodge, consisted of mixed-media installation and print-based work. It investigated the merging of collaborative processes that aim to smush and experiment. It also dealt with the fictional trope of the ‘Queer Crazy Scientist’. The expansion of these two colliding practices explored both artist’s methodologies of working with the archive and composite image-text production respectively.