Featured Artist of The Week: Jess Parry!
"The Visceral. The Grotesque. The Graphic and The Taboo.
Jess is fascinated by the filth that makes us human.
She is concerned with the monstrous femme and confronts ideological womanly bodily parts in a seductively sinister fashion. She explores this through sculpture, performance, video/photography, drawing and arrives at a painting.
Her previous body of work explored the site of the bathroom – "there's just something about the bathroom and that taboo associated with the figure and flesh that I'm really interested in right now"
The site of the bathroom to the artist is the human behind closed doors. The sides of the human we don’t want to see. The taboo associated within such a space of personal intimacy intrigues her. We clean ourselves only to get dirty again. Jess’ new body of work explores the uncanny parts of the human condition.
“I pay more attention to the side of all things human that you wouldn’t really pay attention to, or if you do, you would deem it ugly. I seek to find the beauty within disgust, that can’t be ignored and is no longer overlooked.” "
Selected artwork:
Artworks in order:
Hell Heels, 2021, Acrylics on Calico, 46cm x 36cm, £170
High heels hurt. That is my inspiration. I think all women can agree with this. As an average 5ft 5" woman, I despise the fact that I must wear high heels in order to establish dominance and to stand tall to be listened to as a professional. This is problematic and I want the viewer to confront this. The foot in the red shoe is slowly becoming more bloodier and bruised by each passing second. The foot in the black heel will soon become this. That is why this piece is called Hell Heels as high heels are indeed hellish to wear.
Abracadabra Lick & Lather, 2021, Acrylics and white silk emulsion on Calico, 80cm x 61cm, £250
Inspired by a cosmetic face mask that is meant to remove the dirt from ones skin and pores, this piece questions the quest for beauty behind the suffocation of what women go through to achieve impossible beauty standards within contemporary beauty culture.
She preferred bones to meat, 2019, Mixed Media on Cotton Duck Canvas, 90cm x 60cm, £250
Using a beastly application of paint, the artist explores the juiciness of achieving a visceral painting with anatomical form and colour in mind.