Closed Set is a continuation (reimagining) of my NCAD degree show, exhibited just one year ago. In this iteration, the work explores feelings of emotional dissonance concerning gay pornography. While aware of the pitfalls in the industry and the issues with consuming porn, it is often where sexuality is first explored, constructed and exercised. Meaning, there is a complicated intimacy and memory attached to this material. Closed Set attempts to re-contextualize gay pornography from the artist’s past, removing explicit or inappropriate content and allowing it to be viewed with this level of intimacy. Processes of minimising and amplifying gay pornographic material, produce a work in four parts. A database film using clips from popular gay porn ‘Czech Hunter’ to endlessly generate converging storylines. An audio piece compiling soundtracking and clips from director Joe Gage’s ‘Heatstroke’. An oil painting depicting two young men taken from an image posted to ‘hotwrestlingguys.com’ and finally four life sized deer sculpted in paper-mache. To display the works, a television, a set of speakers and a canvas are housed in dark stained wooden frames, and placed outside in a natural setting. Amongst the deer, the content is given the agency that comes with being innocent or neutral, to be viewed as though part of the landscape.
