"I want things to feel slightly surreal, a little off, absurd, unnatural, humorous.”
-Emily Peacock
Seven Sisters celebrates the opening of Emily Peacock’s solo show Bruiser with a reception on Friday, July 26, 2024, from 5–7 PM. This exhibition spans the artist's raw, intimate oeuvre, featuring recent photographic work, a 20-year self-portrait retrospective, and two new sculptures.
The work in Bruiser is inextricable from Peacock’s unique and wide-ranging background. As an artist, educator, and stand-up comedian, Peacock has pushed the boundaries of multiple media for decades while bringing to the fore crucial conversations about mental health, the body, and family. She combines these pressing topics with skillful investigations of her chosen media. Using diverse references to Diane Arbus, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Francesca Woodman, and Harry Callahan, Peacock inserts herself into art history and fearlessly transforms it. She inherits the formal rigor of these artists and playfully expands upon the emotional possibilities of photography and sculpture. In the tradition of performance art, Peacock boldly unites reverence and irony.
Whether using objects or bodies, Peacock weaves unexpected stories about pain, joy, and longing. Previously unimagined scenarios and relationships emerge, combining darkness and light, tenderness and pain. The artist says, “As dandelions turn to seed, children everywhere rush to pick them so that they can close their eyes, make a wish, and blow the seeds into the air. I find myself wishing or fantasizing a lot, creating scenarios and conversations in my head that will never happen.” Yet she does make them happen by building new worlds, both autobiographical and imaginary. Within these inventive photographic and sculptural spaces, Peacock asserts the necessity of bodily autonomy as it comes increasingly under attack. Care and community are central to her work as she seeks connections across lines of difference. Throughout her career, she has honored the tender, black-and-blue parts of us that might otherwise go unnoticed.
A new series of photographs taken at night entitled Outdoor Recreation reveals strange surreal scenarios, caught between nature, technology, and disposability. Illuminated plastic bags hold cell phones and trinkets. In a lonely way, these objects seem trapped, but also weightless. Peacock’s work dwells in this contrast of dark and light, humor and levity. It represents a purgatory that suspends sadness and evinces a desire to connect. Her work lays barriers and struggles bare.
