Skin and Sewn
A photography exhibition by Callum McCourt and Macy Stewart
Someone drew a picture of me years ago. It was a suit and a pair of glasses, suspended in a white void. This stirred up a crisis of identity in me, got me wondering how others see me. Am I just some clothes? Am I just a body? Do they even see me at all, or are they just seeing what they want to see? How many Callums are out there in the minds of others, and are they just as real as the me I see? That frustration sometimes becomes a voice in the back of my head when I'm photographing or drawing someone, telling me I'm seeing the person at all, just a face.
Skin and Sewn is meant to resolve that frustration.
We have two versions of the subject in every photo. The first subject is the body. It's nude and it's vulnerable, and it's a side that usually remains hidden to others. It has autonomy, it gives us the ability to live, but we're also trapped in it. We may be able to modify it, but we don't get a choice in the one we're born into and it's something we can never escape. The second subject is an outfit, clothes on a mannequin. This side is not alive, it has no autonomy. But it is the side we show to the public, the side that others see. This side can be used to hide ourselves or to express ourselves. It is the side that is constantly shifting, a side that changes every day. Neither subject is more real than the other. Neither subject gives the full picture of a human being. Neither subject is the "core". They're pieces of something more. And maybe somewhere in that white void between skin and fabric we'll find something greater than the sum of these parts.
This exhibition contains some nudity.
Macy Stewart: https://www.instagram.com/
Callum McCourt: https://holymackerel.wixsite.
Free entry
Opening hours 11am-5pm Mon-Fri 12-5pm Sat and 12-4pm Sun
All welcome.