Slash and Burn
Slash and Burn
2024
Inkjet prints, clay, acrylic paint, mount board, foamcore, corrugated card, styrofoam, synthetic fibres, medium-density fibreboard, wooden boards.
Untitled
61 x 73 x 61 cm
Untitled
66 x 61 x 76 cm
Untitled
66 x 64 x 76 cm
Slash and Burn takes its point of departure from the architecture of the iconic houses and visual aesthetics of the horror genre. The site-specific installation has been produced in consideration of the internal architecture of Galleri Gamla Farsot, utilising the gallery’s internal window spaces. The resulting body of work is a marriage between Caitlin E. Littlewood’s current research into museum dioramas and her academic interest (and personal obsession) with the horror film genre.
The miniature diorama medium allows the viewer a near-complete view of the iconic houses. Even though the house itself is often a threatening presence in horror as sites of hauntings, torture and demonic possession; the viewer is not often presented with a total view of the house exterior, or at least not for more than a few seconds or frames. Presented in Galleri Gamla Farsot as miniature versions, the eye wanders over details and at the same time takes in each house in its entirety.
Behind each house, a pair of eyes belonging to each film's heroine stares back out at the viewer. In the tradition of feminist and psychoanalytical film theory (notably Laura Mulvey and Barbara Creed’s seminal texts), the eyes, floating above the respective houses of dread, posture to subvert the viewer’s gaze. Where women’s roles in film have often been objects of desire, instead the trope of the “final girl”; the pure and good girls survive the killer to ultimately embody the “final girl”…at least until the film’s sequel.
Installations images: Galleri Gamla Farsot, Göteborg, 23 February - 8 March 2024.