FALSE IDOL
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2026, Installation: Fabric, Paracord, Feathers 3D Printed Idols, Ratchet Staps, Pokemon Cards, Amethyst Beads, Bells, Diamantés, Video Orb, Audio, Projection, Dimensions Variable
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False Idol explores the slippages between the manufactured and the mystical. It draws parallels between ritual as a mediated realm and the stage as a constructed setting, reflecting on the sincerity and magic present within these states. The work plays with the image of the artist as shaman as a hyperbolic and often commodified symbol and seeks to uncover glimmers of sincerity beneath the artifice.
Connecting the non-physical nature of hyperspace with perceptions of spiritual dimensions, False Idol references glimpses of digital culture that harness the mass-produced to connect with the mystical: Pokémon card tarot readings on TikTok, YouTube videos for lucid dreaming, and cursed videogame soundtracks.
These mass-produced artefacts become proxies for misplaced or obsessive forms of modern worship and manifest as three idols. These figures playfully take the form of monstrous abstractions of artist’s own image and are dressed in highly texture ritualised garments. These are rendered in highly artificial textures and materials, selected because they do not signal authenticity, quality, or provenance. The artist works intensely by hand into the materials, to transform and imbue them with mystical, spiritual energy.
The installation is accompanied by a performance which activates the ritual garment. Concealed elements will become visible through movement whilst the beaded elements evoke glimmering sounds as the body moves. The artist gradually sheds the layers of the costume before ascending an aerial silk and performing a spotlit sequence of movement that epitomises the simultaneous spectacle of idols, stardom and spiritual ritual.
The work considers the presence of magic and mysticism within our manufactured modern landscape and asserts how we can find authenticity within the artificial. It takes our expectations of what is meditated vs what is pure and subverts and amalgamates them. False Idol embraces our intensely constructed world and utilises its materiality to find sublime moments within our everyday realities.
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Commissioned by Somerset House Studios
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Audio by Ben Dixon (From the Deep Audio)
Photos by Dan Pluck and Tim Bowditch
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