CESSPOOL

Solo exhibition by Jennifer Mehigan
Recipient of the 2015 Chan-Davies Art Prize
26 February - 6 March 2016

Open House:       Saturday, 27 February 11:00 AM - 7:00 PM
Opening Night:   Friday, 26 February, 7:00 - 9:00 PM             
Venue:                 SHOPHOUSE 5        
                              5 Lorong 24A Geylang Singapore 398529
                              Other viewings by appointment. Call +65 6338 6192. 

CESSPOOL is a solo exhibition by the 2015 Chan-Davies Art Prize winner Jennifer Mehigan.

CESSPOOL is an immersive presentation of digital and painted imagery conventionally associated with the feminine. In this show, form and flesh are replicated with abandon and often rendered indistinguishable. The images and their installation address what Mehigan describes as the "performance anxiety" of a queer femme aesthetic.

'Femme' and its association with cuteness and beauty is often perceived as excessive artifice next to the 'neutral natural' nature of masculinity. Mehigan's works hone this uncomfortable facet of the feminine and push it to its edge. Digital files begin as recognisable bodies and forms (flowers, rocks, organs, bacteria) and are disintegrated into non-entities printed on fabric canvases. The result is a distilled aesthetic that is abstracted, unrecognisable yet somehow familiar, and capable of infinite reproduction.

Compounding these elements to the extreme and combining them with the trappings of the feminine (glitter, petals) and the grotesque (flies, worms) creates an uncomfortable excessiveness within the exhibition space that serves as a brand of violence unto itself, simultaneously rebeling and reclaiming both space and body. As Mehigan succinctly adds, "It's like being aware of the 'drag' element of femininity, and weaponising that, pushing it further, to the point that it's ugly and appalling but cute and fun still."

About the Artist

Jennifer Mehigan's (b. 1988, Ireland) work investigates the aesthetics of (cyber)sensuality: the erotics of technology merging with physical and often unpleasant realities of parasites, bacteria, and slime, to name a few. The seemingly abstract works consists of images of biological debris—3D models of plasma, viruses, and tentacles—that have been manipulated, twisted, melted, then merged with each other to create queer, chimeric super-glitches, which are printed and presented as paintings.

Jennifer Mehigan is from Cork, Ireland, and has spent much of her life in Singapore. Initially trained in graphic design in Sydney, her work spans multiple platforms with a focus on painting. She has exhibited locally and internationally, including a solo show at Latent Spaces in Singapore, and was part of the 2014 Busan Biennale's Asian Curatorial Exhibition.  In July 2015, Mehigan was part of a group show at Arcadia Missa, London, and that same month presented a solo show at Substation curated by Genevieve Chua. Recent publications include Flaunt Magazine's 133rd issue AND i-D magazine online. Mehigan won the Painting category of the Prudential Singapore Young Artist Award in 2013. She currently lives and works in Cork.