I Touch Myself

Olly Read

I Touch Myself explores the metamorphic nature of flesh, through this work I am exploring ways for materiality to evoke and articulate its instability and vulnerability, to embody the inescapable and irreducibly material nature of bodies. I am interested in the dissociative alterity which comes about as a by-product of the body becoming increasingly conscious of itself, in the simultaneous sense of the body being so inherently familiar yet greatly unfamiliar and unknowable. This obsession and preoccupation with the body stems from autobiographical experiences related to being transgender; in which the body, materials, and space are revealed to be malleable and uncanny.  The jerry-rigged constructions of found materials and soft sculpture speak to a body which is being continually simultaneously formed, unformed, and deformed; this is in the service of activating a consciousness of embodied physicality in which the line between the familiar and other blurs and dissolves. 

In this installation, I am interested in altering the experience of space as it affects and is affected by these works, in particular emphasising the relationship between the viewer and pieces within space. My practice is material and process driven, include the use of soft sculpture, installation, video, and recently incorporating mechanical mechanisms to facilitate movement from sculptures. Though these work addresses my own autobiographical experiences my aim is to opens dialogues for others to both understand their self and the identity of others. This project was made possible by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.