"but the correct perimeters of our clean and proper bodies are forever broken, punctuated by the physical flows that cross them; flows of urine, tears, shit, vomit, blood, sweat and semen. Why is my response to a regular, necessary, universal human activity, a response of fear and loathing? Of shame and infantilisation? I work hard to alienate these parts of myself that disgust me." (Nick Mansfield - Subjectivity: Theory of the Self from Freud to Halloway)

 

The work is the exploration of the child’s inevitable entrance into the social, linguistic and ritualistic world as precedence over the previous unity of mother and child. The maternal becomes abject; a gradual loss and discard. Through the expulsion of food, spit, fluid and the focus upon the mouth, I represent the simultaneous determination of the child's self and the ultimate rejection of the mother, with reference to theoretical influences of Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan.

 

The utilization of video and sound allow the work to deviate into the practice of documentation; an accuracy within the capturing of visual image, whilst the potential of editing and manipulation accentuates the emphasis of the disgust and repulsion that is often associated with bodily ejection.