Laura Duffy

Laura Duffy

Garden of Purity: Open your mouth wide and I will fill it, 2018

Comprised of the following seven works:

I am without shame, I am ashamed : I am the speaking of my name

Do not stare at me when I am thrown, I am the limbs of my mother

You who deny me confess me : You who confess me deny me

Pay attention to me am she who is disgraced and she who is important

I am the coming together and the falling apart : I am the enduring and the disintegration

I appear to be lust but inside is self control : you who loathe me why do you love me

I am without sin and the root of sin is within me : I am she who shouts and it is I who listens

Total running time: 20 mins 59 secs

Courtesy of the artist

Laura Duffy is a Wellington-based artist who primarily works with moving image and sculpture. This series Open your mouth and I will fill itis a collection of seven videos that are informed by the queer poem The Thunder: Perfect Mind (c. 350 C.E.). The Coptic poem is structured like a monologue made from a series of paradoxical statements that function in opposition to each other. Although written long ago, the text has found a place in a contemporary setting due to its queer, feminist and theological reading. Duffy references this poem by titling the works using excerpts from the text.

In the series Open your mouth and I will fill it, Duffy filmed foods that are considered ‘sexually charged’ as they decay – showing their transition from desirable to repulsive foodscapes. She employs the tropes of advertising by strategically using slow motion, time-lapses, extreme close-ups – with the intention to fetishise the subject. In the works, tiny organic landscapes pulsate, secreting fluids between aerial hyphae – the streams of liquid pulsating with rhythmic precision as it flows between the crevices of rotting flesh. Or as an oyster ferments, spit-sized bubbles begin to lace the surrounding milky water. Watching these works, we are sucked into Duffy’s paradoxical world of pleasure and sin, growth and decay.

CALL FOR REAR WINDOW PROPOSALS
The Dunedin Public Art Gallery will accept proposals for our Rear Window programme all year round, to be considered for the ongoing programme. The proposal must be for a single-channel moving image work, can include sound (only operating between 6am and 11pm), and a screening fee will be negotiated.
Proposals can be sent to: rearwindow@dcc.govt.nz