ALANA COTTON, ROBIN ELHAJ & PATRICK MCDAVITT

Alana Cotton, Robin Elhaj & Patrick McDavitt

ROBIN ELHAJ

Robins work discusses the non-locality of the twenty first century body, as indivisible with online identity. 

There are bodies that are material, but online bodies and identities are also presented differently and in part, as social media platforms and as valid subjective identities in all online interactions.

Incorporating scan codes, Robins work aims to elaborate on the multiplicity of gendered identity as a digital product. The transgender body is manifested in the ability to ‘pass’ within the binary codes of male and female and considers the internet as a system of surveillance, par excellence. The Stopover considers the seen and unseen component of a gender that is supposedly ‘fixed’ as ‘male’ whilst also expressing the contradictions of transgendered experience as a constantly moving identity always arriving and departing, moment to moment, day to day, byte by byte, pixel by pixel, from desired object to duplicate image and back again.

ALANA COTTON

Alana Cotton's video works are inspired by the ways that digital storage and social media prompt, forbid or require certain forms of memory, and how the mind adapts. The spaces she creates using the video game software Unity immerse the viewer in a tour of a space shaped by the electronic remnants of her experiences, with a soundtrack that contrasts this with the traditional-media zeitgeist of the time. 

2020, March to May documents the digital detritus of a period where virtual spaces replaced physical ones, where video gaming became a sought-after escape and a replacement for reality, and a worldwide push to “stay inside” stretched the limits of outside and inside alike.

PATRICK MCDAVITT

Patrick McDavitt works in ceramics and mixed media in an experimental, practice driven approach. His work investigates queer temporality, sexuality, cruising, awkwardness, shame, and pleasure. His work utilises archaeological methodologies to generate queer histories. By exploring the gaps in archaeological findings, Patrick aims to make space for queer imagination and narratives.