My limbs feel heavy. My back cracks, and I can feel my spine gently and slowly curves. Wrinkled fingertips, loose teeth, and white hair sprouting from my roots. An orthopedic cane materializes in front of me. It’s a possession.
In Grandma’s House, I become a puppet in an uncanny play that reexamines my complicated relationship with my grandmother. By reenacting, recombining, and remixing the memories of our connection through sculpture, video, sound, performance, and drawing, I craft an intimate world of obsessions that explores ideas of fragility, strength, and the complexities and conventions of familial love.
In these spooky games, I am not alone. A full-size puppet of myself, silicon fingers, wigs, candy canes, and other elements of personal memory take part in this game of ghostly possessions and repetitive reenactments. Slowly, the roles confined within this structure fracture, and new identities and behaviors emerge. The boundaries of subject/object, artist/grandson, and specter/living body dissolve. Constantly pushing against each other, these elements and characters of personal history break into an off-script territory to create an impossible choreography of unexpected transformations and new affective permutations.
These elements set an unsettling territory, not for reconciliation but to bring forth moments of fray and confrontation. Grandma’s House is not a place of sweet comfort but a trap.
Stand-In Stand-Up (2022)
3-channel 4K video with stereo sound, 16min loop
Video link is to an HD single channel version for review purposes only. Not meant for exhibition.
Whisper Hole, Candy Hole
faux wood paneling, theater flats, sandbags, lamps, drawings, collage elements
2-channel 4K video loop with 4-channel sound
Note: both videos linked below correspond to the top and bottom holes in the installation. They are low resolution versions meant for review purposes only and not for exhibition outside of the installation environment.
House Dress (2022)
fabric, resin, silicone
Curtain Wall (2022)
Silicone, looped video
email: matthew@matthewmcgaughey.com
phone: 310.622.3831
