Thick, Stretchy, Sticky Space

IMT Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition by emerging interdisciplinary artist Fran Hayes. Thick, Stretchy, Sticky Space features digital paintings and video works that delve into speculative landscapes, inspired by damaged ecologies, science-fiction, and the uncanny; all viewed through a profoundly human lens.

Stumbling into technotime you are confronted by amorphous energies, they are whispering sweet nothings - forgotten melodies, dark truths, hidden narratives - digital paintings spill from screens, illuminating elastic futures.

i have seen it before but forgot…

lightning strikes sequins pour down my legs
their tiny plastic bodies scream in bliss

memories are lost to tides
whispered secrets pass from tongue to tongue
pain and ecstasy continue their slowdance
i cease, in effect, to be part of humankind

Tidal child, your power is waxing, you have eddied out but will return, surging back with power
and treasures
Riches abounding

time slides irrevocably into the past
hold on like it’s greasy
or let go like it scalds

The embroidered sampler, early nesting, now
cast aside, unfinished, the Y stemless, suspended,
Incomplete, Y for You, my incomplete, part-formed Pisces fish
excuses excuses     
(she excuses herself)
She was convulsing me, twisting me without heed like screwed paper before the fire
Knifing her way through the net of my caul
Swimming free, breaking the sac, slippering from me on a tide of amniotic piss

My body taking over, instinct ruling as I squat
Feral, panting, red-smeared, feet washed by my own blood
My body spitting her out like a pip
Or is she spurning my safety, ripe and ready to fall?
she is a woman now she stretches leisurely into all corners of the human condition
i fall through her pelvic floor

A yowl, a shit, her father’s best shoes bespoiled
I collapse, spent, sated, finished, flaccid belly, torn skin
I keen a welcome, as she gazed sightless, blue marble eyes and black hair
Alien child, yet more familiar than myself

The fisherwife comes to stitch me, needle-bright pain in a field of blood
Puckering an added contour on the map of my skin
Remaining to this day, a private souvenir

softly, she thawed
bruised by moss she grew into the world
She is mine, yet not mine: together we are enmeshed in Earth’s fabric

she was marinating in her own flesh, her own skin
desperate to escape the monotony of life yet unsure how to do so she makes art and then she does not she crumbles in on herself         
(i crumble in on myself)             
[we crumble in on ourselves]

how can you go from thinking something is forever
to thinking that it never even existed at all
and feel nothing

The woods where you ran now echo with silence
Waiting
The birds call, the beech mast crunches underfoot, underfeet
Undefeated, it waits for your return

how can one process anything when life moves so terrifyingly fast
viewing a dozen world disasters concurrently from the convenience of your palm
twisted truths leak from black mirrors but stay a comfortable distance from the pits of despair that grow in our bellies

a broken fish is spat out onto the shore
a feathered heart beats faithfully against the changing night
i can only be what i am
yet believe me i try to be more

my heart is heavy
a clenched fist holding onto old memories
i just want arms around me
i don’t care whose
(as long as they’re yours)

A little hedgepig, so spiky, defensive yet dripping vulnerables
Bright and hot and sudden as lava spits
My arms encircle, but they are not the right ones
Yet they will do, for now

Text by Fran and Ruth Hayes