Portfolio

 "Fabricated Surrender" and "Splintered Unfolding: Artefacts from the sheets" 2025

The Automatic performer - using the body in performance without conscious thought or intention. Paying attention to the body, using pain and constraint as tools in the creative process which is fundamentally enacted through engagement with materials.

“Fabricated Surrender” documents the mark-making of automatic performance, using the body as a site of inquiry and vehicle of protest within its confines.
Using the sensual, pain, and constraint as tools to challenge body politics in a desperate urge for a sense of belonging. 

The installation is in conversation with 4 drawings “Splinted Unfolding: artefacts from the sheet”. Drawn through acts of automatism whilst on bed rest and living with chronic illness , this installation of works depicts the vulnerability of body and uncanny self.

"The Tent" 2024

This installation explores the body’s relationship to material and space, delving into themes of identity and gender, exploring the physical and non-physical self. This structural installation embodies a melancholy likeness to living entity, singing its gentle hum its skin sagging as it holds itself tall, joints about to give, and over time begins to sink.

The space allows for a moment of contemplation, audience members were invited inside to take advantage of its space, they must allow the self to be immersed within the space, placing themselves at the centre point of consuming data, in attempt to make sense of the reality. 

The work to focuses on process rather than outcome, allowing for something to take place in a moment of time. The work attemps to make sense of raw data input through the creative process, focussing on translation and emotional interpretation. .  

"Happening" 2023

The use of body and vulnerability of self in relationship to light and space are foundations of which this work stands on. This research investigates the relationship between contemporary feminism, body politics and developments in spiritual philosophical discourse.  Utilising absorbed states for both creation and experience as critical visual language.

This film and sonic collage installation interrogates the relative layering of performative film footage, exampling the bodies dislocation between self and belonging.  Poetry, written and developed throughout the project is incorporated amongst the vibrant hues, reflecting upon processes of expansion, deconstruction, reduction and reforming. 

 See full film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8syzakxa0Y

"Blood Series" 2022

My body in performance claims control over its vulnerability. My skin sheds across the page, until all which remains is the trace of once was. 

This documented performance explores what it means to exist in a body when there is always a gaze on you. The work uses automatism and autobiographical themes to explore subjectivity,  trauma and pain as themes in contemporary practices. 

 Painting.

This selection of work highlights personal stories and uses mark making to express and map physical experiences. This section of my portfolio is in current practical development.

 More paintings located on my instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/caitlynmatthews_art/

Older Works