Thin Outer Layer

A solo show of work by Alana Ferguson

March 8 – April 6 2025

WORK

The side of the body-ies caught the edge of the body-ies, made them rounder and a scoop and eyeless. Photographs of the family didn’t catch anywhere on the underside, or only did. Rolled off, tongued, sat down, splatted. The side of the flesh, fruit basket, dripping down into a mass of together-ness, force and form, funny like that. Son, self, husband. Churn, self, chum. Husband, self. Son, mother, self. Husbandselfsonsonbandusselfself. Hush, when sun bore fruit, smashed it. A patchwork and a preoccupation together. Photographs of the family. Amalgamate and the scent of scalp- bores until something else happens. The lips of the body move a little bit but the mouth is slumping and has no hole. Seeds. Whiteness, ugly instruments, together. Broad hard little weapon, plutonic I mean nuclear I mean photographs. Someone else’s teeth. Fruit rises a little high and the undersides of the skin are pressed more firmly into the what is that, bent hose? Nipple? Dripping? Nuzzle a little on the legs and the thing that is outside feels it. Deeply bored, deeply feeling, deeply breaking up a melon for eating. Almost a quilt, not. Touching. Make some direction about what to do but they bleed into how it feels to do and what might have not been done and what emerging from that means and then meaning is just more skin on top of it. There! I can see plans for how and on top I can see the way something feels to break and the underneath sound of drilling is what I can see. Finding purchase in dimension, the force of owning and melting meaning backing down. A fight? Use me to smash a fruit for us. Use the smell of my scalp and its slight wobbles to balance one piece of everything for us. Unit. Family. Form. Force. Falling to smash, failing.

SPACE

There is a room here where people took the thing that was their skin and had a strange mark on it or a worrying burn on it or a feeling that simply persisted and they sat in a big chair and pointed. Talked and pointed and didn’t eat fruit or were sore because they ate fruit or were sore because they were dying or weren’t sleeping or nothing was happening and that was the problem of it. A problem is a mass, discomfort is a point of contention, pointing out helps. You can’t get out of your skin but you can hope that it looks better. Feels. Other eyes can see your back, ass, blades. To who or for why or what a family ism is a different question. Entirely. The freckled skin of a banana for instance is not of interest! Put it in you before you come and hide it in your energy. A baby might be of interest if it is red or bumpy. If your skin is the texture of the wall paper behind the desk then you can certainly have a problem. Family practice, family business, boxes of notes on other peoples skin that sat too long and became moldy and had to be destroyed tastefully. Photographs included. What does protection look like. Documentation and pixelation of the words used to describe the/it/surface/itch. Pours in and pours up smashing energy both ways to sunday. Round the corner and look for it.

Text by Kim Upstill