Hannah Macfarlane

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

Group Catalogue Site

While we live in our beautiful, imperfect, soft and hardened skin homes, remember to handle yourself and others with care.

Intimacy is to reveal ones’ innermost self, to be exposed, without certainty of the outcome, or how we will be received. It is to feel, to reveal, to fear and to hope. True intimacy cannot be achieved without vulnerability and connection. Yet leaning into vulnerability can be a challenging and painful endeavour, especially now that we are faced with our own human fragility, our supposed weaknesses, faults and inadequacies. In this age of the connected disconnect, isolation and loneliness has created even more of a divide. While we are in the constant presence of each other’s absence, isolation has emboldened the human habit of carving out connection. With universal longing for acknowledgement and affection, we yearn for intimacy and connection, yet terrified of the potential of pain. We build boundaries and barriers, only giving considered pieces of ourselves away. Humans are hardwired for connection, yet we squeeze ourselves into moulds of expectation, minimising the parts of us that do not fit into an illusionary ‘ideal’. We criticize, shame and disengage.

My intention is to explore the importance of intimacy and to cultivate a tender sense of self in uncertain times. It is to accept and nurture the seemingly ‘imperfect’ aspects of ourselves in order to accept and appreciate those facets in the external world. It is to have honesty with our own human fragility and to generate a feeling of comfort with what is seemingly uncomfortable. With my work I want to explore hope and curiosity in a time of alienation and isolation. Through sculptural objects and the body, I want to externalise my mental processes of self-care. Through materiality and methodologies I manage the discomfort and uncertainty of experiences and acknowledge the aching necessity of being all in, the awkward, the terrifying and the hopeful.

Through performing care, leaning into the discomfort and acknowledging the self, I let the pain have a voice, slowly shedding my symbolic ‘skins’ and cultivating a tender sense of self. It has been an act. A choice. An essential strategy to exist in this world and connect with others. Through these performances of vulnerability, my ambition with my practice is to encourage the gentle reclamation of self. I want to highlight the value of simply being, rather than knowing.

Incomplete, imperfect, soft and sickly, enticing and grotesque. I want people to engage with the forms – to touch, to hold, to normalise. To perhaps navigate their own bodies, interactions and internal experiences. Yet how should one explore intimacy when touch is hazardous?

The creation of these objects, the physical processes of sculpting, stitching, stuffing, layering, stretching, dying, throwing, rubbing, tearing away and holding, becomes a physical manifestation of daily acts of care and processing as I work intimately with each material.

From fragile remnants of connection to comfort objects, felted flesh and latex sheddings, hand dyed bedsheets and crete stone creatures, the familiar yet strange objects have all been meditatively worked into, holding care within the natural and synthetic materials.

Exploring skin is to invite consideration of this protective barrier as well as what it contains, what we usually cannot see. Bringing the insides out, I want to invite people into these skins. The material relations and explorations act as components of the body, connecting to the whole. Through making and processing, the materials, objects and skins have collected meaning. One can engage with the objects and the space while they navigate their own bodies, interactions and internal experiences.

If the objects or performances make you feel uncomfortable, that is alright. It is okay to not be okay, to sit with discomfort and question why it is there.