dinosaurkilby

How to Get Attention When You're Drowning

6 August - 25 September 2022

I CAN FEEL A BIG CRY COMING ON

Wet relief. Tears flow. Satin sheets. A cartoon love heart. I spat it out into the ether. Ptui. Manifesting.

Loss, grief, tears, eulogy, love, lust, sex, dysphoria, pin ups, arousal, heroines, weight, you, heavy, crying, me, webcam, living, body, fluid, cinema, history, humour, wanking, religion, falling, dad, christ, breakdown, death, life.

Ed Ruscha eat your heart out.

An obsession with font, Leah is seeking meaning through typography. It’s here, big elongated capital Georgia black letters, echoing Times New Roman, stand for history, seriousness, once carved in stone and marble. Now here pigmented oil is daubed on soft pink satin.

Painting here is your name tattooed on my neck. Painting here it is that thing you said that made me sad. Painting here is an emotional bursting. Painting here is being alone wrapped in satin. Painting here is lived.

And there are only two colours. Black and Red and maybe Pink.

Text swirls, constricted by medium and concept. Bent and sticky, the typography experimental. Leah is dealing with BIG themes. Perfection is striven for. Often missed, or messed. The outcomes of living, of working, of touch, and love, and loss.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

-Stevie Smith

Leah Hickey (b. 1996) is an artist concerned with love, loss and dysphoria. Through short-form autobiographical prose, typographic design and photographic self-portraiture, Hickey exorcises the emotional trauma brought about by varying forms of grief: bereavement, betrayal, breakdowns and first loves. Influenced by Nihilist and post-Feminist praxis, Hickey's practice foremost lends itself to the post-Pop Art movement of the 1970s, alongside mid-century adult material, to navigate axis of identity under Patriarchy.

Hickey has exhibited nationally, including Eastside Projects, Recent Activity and as part of COMMODITIES with The Molasses Gallery in Stepney Green, London. The artist co-manages and operates an artists' studio and reprographic printing workshop at the Jubilee Centre in Birmingham's Gay Village. In 2021, Hickey co-founded Maiden Studio, an artist-run online platform which centres a collaborative approach to the production and curation of artwork.

As of 2022, Hickey has established Emotional Outbursts, a monthly newsletter dedicated to writing, artwork-in-progress and contextual research. Hickey is also a member of arts education platform School of the Damned, and is currently an Information Assistant at Ikon Gallery in Brindley Place.

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