My Deuce, My Double is a solo exhibition of new paintings by the British artist Bex Massey.
Massey presents the viewer with isolated objects depicted in a soft realism, rendered in oil under an even light. Images are presented in relation to each other, two per work, a painted object depicted beside its partner to form a visual echo. In Daniel (2024) the jaws of a yawning cat are paired with the fleshy opening of a conch shell. Similarly, in Cryos 74263 (2024), the image of red jam oozing from the centre of a donut is partnered with the impacted metal grill of a crashed car. Despite this apparent incongruity, subtle parallels in the structure of each image create connections between the paired objects, the contours of the bite-mark subtly follow and match with the folded metal and indentations of the crash.
The image pairings within these paintings encourage allusion to female bodies, building an underlying sexual tension imbued by the artist into quotidian objects. An implied auditory element further extend this to the images, the scenes contain the potential of noise, whether it’s the moment a fizzy drink explodes or bubble gum bursting – force in one image, release in its partner image.
Massey’s previous works and exhibitions have engaged the codes and history of queer culture, along with markers of selfhood and Northern identity. As suggested by the show title, borrowed from Auden’s poem ‘The Age of Anxiety’, these new works derive from feelings of tension and stress felt by the artist in recent months. Massey cites society’s persistent, habitual reminder that female + female = incorrect, that existence outside of the approval and verification of the male gaze is inappropriate. Her recent fertility journey with her partner has brought this into sharp focus, and this process is alluded to in the title of each piece, named as they are after the potential sperm donors they have considered. This additional layer encourages the viewer to see the sexual imagery through a reproductive lens.
Bex Massey, My Deuce, My Double, 1st – 18th May 2024, SEVENTEEN
This is the second of two collaborations produced with the online platform Gertrude taking place at the gallery. To follow Bex on the Gertrude app click here.
About the artist
Bex Massey’s work examines the role of painting and the language of display in the face of popular culture. She amalgamates simulacra and allegory to investigate notions of ‘worth’ via motifs extracted from her childhood. Her practice has long utilised these multiple collaged images to relay the mass produced, current capitalist epoch and anxiety abound the pace of modern digital living. Previous canvas painstakingly rendered stock imagery only to obscure them with further screen grabs. Each layer of British nostalgia threatening the ruination of the last which to a degree mirrored the zeitgeist of post Brexit ‘Great’ Britain and her unease in this milieu. Canvas therefore left viewers feeling uncomfortable by the very nature of the reems of imagery and varying painterly motifs used in each work.
Her latest series ‘My deuce, My double’ is a departure from this visual style, but a real progression in manifesting these feelings via paint. Canvas adopt a more minimal colour palette (lifted directly from Bex’s childhood) that feels retro, sticky and at points sickly sweet. They look softer, seem slower and feel more uncomfortable as the unease in this series is created via the relationships between the minimal elemental conflations. These works conjure silent sounds, unnoticed forces, and tonnes of pressure in an awkward ecstasy meets end of days power play. This climactic series aims to discuss global anxieties (cost-of-living crisis, imminent recession, global warming, wars, nuclear threat, echo chambers, conspiracy theories, disinformation and more…unravelling at terminal velocity) at best bubbling just below the surface of daily life, but for many ever present. She is painting ‘The [present] Age of Anxiety’.
