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There are faint moments in our lives, I suppose sort of gray spaces, that are thinning. It’s kind of like being stuck in the ether, a feeling you can’t fully describe but it feels recognizable yet foreboding at the same time. Alluring, I guess. It’s memories you can’t remember but they’ve left this stain in your head, like oil on cotton.
Losing your memory but remembering you had something there at some point. How do you describe emptiness that isn’t really empty? It sort of has a sound to it, you know like hardware under your laptop giggling at you, under the keyboards.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. That’s what it sounds like. Or, tp-tp-tp-tp-tp-tp. Hm, maybe both at the same time. Ch-tp-ch-tp-ch-tp. Hm. Okay!!
Well, fuck I don’t have the answer to this. Everything that comes my way in the philosophical sense turns to soot in my brain and I generally think Descartes was a cuck with a deficiency for being interesting. I guess, what I do know is that we as humans, with an astounding sense of consciousness compared to other beings on our planet, are so terrified of slipping out of it.
We fear not knowing and becoming dissociative beings that lose ourselves to a docile state. It’s so painful it hurts like a cyst about to rupture, with puss and all, biblical levels of pain. Trust me I’ve come pretty close to that exact feeling.
Progress work of "Chess Pieces with Symbols" (20x40in) and "Sick Ushanka Girl" (8x10in)
Courtesy of Marni Marriott
As I sat, staring at Marni’s laptop screen, looking at her process work and inspirations for her, at the time, upcoming solo show Fugue State, I wondered what the thinning felt like. For me, it seems like just itchy static on your skin, like a few moments before your hair stands up but your body can predict what’s about to occur.
As she went from flicking through the slides to serving customers, I remembered the first time I’d met her. It was in the dark fog at Bambi’s in 2022 when lockdowns were lifted. Over time, we’d weave in and out of circles and soon find ourselves here, talking about a thinning string that never snaps.
Fugue State is truly a conversation between the artist and the art. It’s only done in hushed whispers and loud in silence. It’s only conducted between the two. When finally, the series of paintings decide to talk to you, it’s without a conversation being had. You, personally, can never speak to it. It’s a poltergeist of some sort. It’s omnipresent, just like the fucking oil stain seeping into the back of your mind. It forces you to have hushed whispers with yourself.
It plays a Pavlovian trick on you, making you come back, as though the torture of an unanswered question is a treat. Aren’t you a sick little freak? You’re at its servitude through a ritualistic pull. It’s full of desire and idleness.
Anyways…the art. Eau d’art. Right? Ugh, French…(it means art water)
"Sick Ushanka Girl"
(8x10in) Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott
Screen Time, Is My Time was once echoed on a loop within some streaming platform. On the internet, of course! Or was that Night Time? Same thing. The Internet always finds itself as this precarious place, creating some of the most obscene yet artistically explorative pieces of content.
I’ve been on it for the past 20+ years. It’s little crystal meth but with wires and my acrylics make a cute sound when I type.
There was the mannequin that stood around the room in a blonde wig with red lipstick, moved slightly as the cam chord picked up a disturbing hum in the background. Or the soft-core mud wrestling videos from 2008, or so, that captured an era of male-gaze fetish. The latter would soon possibly turn into straight men yearning for mud up their asses.
Side note: I think in many ways we have used this against them, reclamation of some sort, both in the mud fighting and shoving mud up their asses. I mean, I’d help a man out for a hefty price, just to see him flinch a little. Femme retaliation, empowerment… hooray!
God, the Internet has made me jaded and my eyes wide in shell shock. It made yours too, have a look.
"Smiling Mannequin with Symbol"
(8x10in) Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott and Hunt Gallery
"Smiling Mannequin with Symbol", in all its glory, is the lost internet. Not the void you get lost in late at night, but the lost world you intentionally seek when spiraling. The most enthralling thing about her is whatever you want her to be. Whatever you seek in her because you came looking for her. It doesn’t matter what she actually is, who fucking cares! Am I right fellas? Knocking on the plastic shell isn't going to make you any better than the rest, you still see her as...well a shell silly!
Maybe there’s also another metaphor in there somewhere? Possibly to do with existing in some performative way, the act of seeming natural while every move is meticulously planned.
Who knows.
"Actress"
(16x20in) Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott and Hunt Gallery
I like to see it as the sister to ‘Actress.’ Never a twin, always a sister. It’s the shifting of oneself into another character or being, playing a role to entertain. This nighttime fascinator with tricks up its sleeve, only to go home to a darkly lit home.
It’s what you don’t see, I guess and it’s what she won’t remember the next day. She’ll sit, taking her shoes off to the crackle of the lamp she found on the street and fall asleep, maybe drunk maybe sober. But the memory will pass. She won’t remember picking the loose string of the stock, tucking herself in or dusting the ash off of her skirt. Maybe the blisters will remind her, but only to never wear those shoes again.
Don’t those lost Internet pockets make you feel like that? Like the last moments of undress before sleep? The most repetitive parts of our lives that never latch in our brain, but stick just strong enough to continue the routine each night. It makes you think about…
What do we do when we are alone?
"Eye with Tumour or Dreams" (8x10in) and "My Destiny" (9x11in)
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott and Hunt Gallery
Static. Like I said. That’s the feeling I get, scoring onto your hair that scrunches quickly into ash on your skin. That’s the sound you hear when you're alone. Bzzzz-hmmmm-bzzzzzzzzz. It’s like a Bernadette Carroll Compilation being the soundtrack to your life. God, I love that woman.
They must’ve sent you
meant for me
some kind of magic that I must believe
if this is love
well then it’s heavenly
There’s a sense of voyeurism in Fugue State, perhaps not intentional but so ever-present. You see it in "My Destiny" and "Eye with Tumour or Dreams", closing in on these moments of sleep state. Entering the dream worlds through these tender and sensitive spots.
"Moon and Symbols"
(16x20) Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott and Hunt Gallery
"Moon and Symbols" plays with the idea of being watched, with the moon peering in the distance as perhaps the observer or the showwoman. Is this all just a performance, what we do alone. Is it all just for the show we’ve created in our heads?
"Self Portrait" (11x14in) and "Bussy Discourse" (12x16in)
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott and Hunt Gallery
Marni shows this intimate state, fleeting moments that may pass us, but moments we naturally find ourselves in. "Self Portrait" and "Bussy Discourse" are these moments we don’t think to perform and naturally find ourselves in. Intimate and true, a blur yet has a special sheen to it. Does that make sense? I feel like I’m rambling here…
Let’s clear it up: We don’t intentionally perform these acts, our bodies just slip into them. It’s a motion that’s generationally passed down and holds this indescribable power.
visual.
"Kitchen Scene" (24x30in) Oil on panel and "Heaven's Night" (16x20) Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott and Hunt Gallery
Marni builds tension within these moments, we see that in "Heaven’s Night" with the heel pressed into a flinching palm. The snap of the arch neck, "Kitchen Scene", soars into a sound you can hear through the painting. Don’t these feel like moments we should remember yet can’t seem to recall? It’s kind of like we remember the sensation rather than the visual.
"Knowledge" (11x14) and "Chess Pieces and Symbols" (20x40in)
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Marni Marriott and Hunt Gallery
She creates a sort of fantom pain, that’s numbing and quite humorous. When K and I spoke about it, he described the emptiness as rich, capturing something so intricate and full. It’s funny, how those loose fleeting moments are captured with such detail, reminding you to find meaning in the empty. Like the humans we naturally are, we will always yearn for meaning in emptiness.
Marni fills the vacancy with meaning, even if the meaning seems meaningless. It’s all contradictory to itself, but it’s like hypocrisy that we all tend to hold, it’s a natural state of being to oppose one's self. It’s a truth in the dissociative state that we find ourselves in. A grainy curtain hides this feeling, making us forget it exists, but Marni captures it perfectly. She time and time again tells a story through each painting that I have had trouble describing.
I hope my words make sense, I hope my feelings seem rational in how they make me feel. There isn’t anything truly like this. It’s all quite lovely, to be honest.