Idle

The foundation of this residency comes in the form of a mutual understanding of what it is like to experience your queer adolescence against the backdrop of a small heteronormative town where patriarchal ideas dominate and suffocate.

We - the artists - are interested in how these experiences have manifested in our own approaches to making art: how growing up lacking exposure to nearby representations of queerness made us turn to the internet and technology in an attempt to find a place to belong.

The work that features in IDLE uses the screen as a point of focus. It is a place of both connection and separation of coming together but remaining apart, witnessing the non-social aspect of physical interaction and the connectedness of the online group chat.

The performative dimension of Robert Oros' oeuvre runs throughout the exhibition and merges with the other artworks; the architecture and the bodies displayed within and the sound that bleeds from the various monitors and screens. The space is a vessel for echoes - it creates a constant presence by mirroring, displaying and surveilling. The duality of the live music against the recorded sound produces tension, eclipsing the human presence and creating a varied experience based on the viewer's placement within the space.

The performers become an obstruction: they block sound, create physical disconnect and generate discomfort. Connected only by their devices, they are seen kneeling, laying on the cold concrete floors, holding long selfie positions and standing aimlessly in the space.

Abi Birkinshaw's contribution to the work in IDLE is found in the digital drawings and large experimental mono prints of Oros' friends and past lovers. She has chosen images somewhat arbitrarily from social media to use as reference, in order to create portraits of people she has never met. As the time spent creating a print provides time for contemplation and thought, parasocial relationships between the artist and the subject have formed.

The prints and drawings are hung in a manner that offers an industrial, almost abattoir-like, experience. Semi-naked bodies and intimate acts, like laying in bed or smoking cigarettes, are presented to contradict the coldness and harsh reality of the room in which they reside.