Artist: Hannah Perry
Exhibition title: Viruses Worth Spreading
Venue: Arsenal Contemporary NYC, New York, US
Date: May 3 – July 2, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Arsenal Contemporary is proud to present Viruses Worth Spreading, an exhibition of new work by Hannah Perry on view from May 3 through July 2.
The exhibition also comprised of Erotic Discourse 4, a performance by the artist, in collaboration with composer and musician Adam Bainbridge, performance curator Richie Shazam Khan, and clothing designer HYDRA.
Over the past few years Perry has combined video, sculpture, installation, music, and performance to navigate a terrain where taste and class interlock, where communicable and shared aesthetics are solidified, and where identity is performed. Through the artist’s interjections, Perry’s hometown in the North West of England is reimaged as an industrial landscape populated by souped-up cars and adolescent, too-tight tube tops. Industry here gives way to an everyday lifestyle and a so-called working class aesthetic, both abstract entities synthesized under the umbrella of culture and ritual.
For Viruses Worth Spreading, Perry presses these concerns onto the interminable terrain of trauma, heartache, and anxiety. The theme of the autobody shop becomes elastic, extended into a drippy, latex dream where eventually only the body remains. The impact of a car crash is experienced as a site of brute force, a concave mold indexed and repeatable, simultaneously conjuring the cliché of the hysteric woman who has lost control. Perry weds these replicable archetypes to the images and characters through which they’ve been performed, adding herself and appropriating others in this already-dense archive. Imagined in a realm where relationships share equal footing in the virtual and real world—one strung between online stalking, love letters, sexts, and selfies—Perry’s sculptures and images incubate the public performance of private relationships.
For the exhibition, the main gallery space has been transformed into a multi-sensorial installation. Perry’s addition of impermanent warped walls offers a deferential space in-the-making, situated between a construction site, or the furtive subconscious. Cry Daggers, a single channel video, stitches together varied footage—from excerpts of L.A. car rides, to clips of the artist’s nieces’ private performances, to GIF-like self shots—punctuated by an ambulating script describing episodes of retaliation and lust. The possible relationships between femininity and hysteria, machismo and industrialism are left to drift somewhere in between contingency and essence, threaded through the intimate and the shared.
Hannah Perry lives and works in London. She received her BA from Goldsmiths College in 2009 and a MA from Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Solo exhibitions include 100 Problems, CFA, Berlin; Mercury Retrograde, Seventeen, London; You’re gonna be great, Jeanine Hofland, Amsterdam; Hannah Perry, Zabludowicz Collection, London. Recent institutional group exhibitions include I feel we think bad, Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal; Private Settings: Art After the Internet, MOMA Warsaw; New Order II, Saatchi Gallery, London; Stedelijk at Trouw: Contemporary Art Club – DATA, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Performances by the artist have been hosted at Serpentine Gallery, London; Boiler Room, London; V22, London.
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Cry Daggers, 2017, HD video
Hannah Perry, Cry Daggers, 2017, HD video
Hannah Perry, Cry Daggers, 2017, HD video
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, 100 Problems, 2017, Expanding foam, foam, duvet, 71 x 85 x 12 in. (180.34 x 215.9 x 30.48 cm)
Hannah Perry, A Phone Full Of Friendzones, 2017, Screenprint on aluminum, digital perplex print on plexiglass, 54 x 72 in. (137.16 x 182.88 cm)
Hannah Perry, Cameos In Dreams, 2017, Digital perplex print on plexiglass, 47 x 72 in. (119.38 x 182.88 cm)
Hannah Perry, Cock Blocking, 2017, Foam, vinyl, steel strapping, 53 x 30 x 29 in. (134.62 x 76.2 x 73.66 cm)
Hannah Perry, Cucci Copey, 2017, Expanding foam, synthetic hair extensions, duvet, 55 x 81 x 14 in. (139.7 x 205.74 x 35.56 cm)
Hannah Perry, Cucci Copey, 2017, Expanding foam, synthetic hair extensions, duvet, 55 x 81 x 14 in. (139.7 x 205.74 x 35.56 cm)
Hannah Perry, Give Me Pleasure and Obey, 2017, Foam, vinyl, steel strapping, 50 x 51 x 15 in. (127 x 129.54 x 38.1 cm)
Hannah Perry, Hey Papi, 2017, Screenprint on plexiglass and aluminum, 58 x 72 in. (147.32 x 182.88 cm)
Hannah Perry, I Enjoy Being A Woman, 2017, Expanding foam, synthetic hair extensions, duvet, 85 x 58 x 12 in. (215.9 x 147.32 x 30.48 cm)
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC
Hannah Perry, Minor Threats, 2017, Foam, vinyl, steel strapping, 31.5 x 28 x 52.5 in. (80 x 71.12 x 133.35 cm)
Hannah Perry, Pretty, 2017, Plexiglass, crushed car parts, foam, latex, 39 x 55 x 6 in. (99 x 139 x 15.25 cm)
Hannah Perry, Size Queen, 2017, Screenprint on plexiglass, digital perplex print on plexiglass, 55 x 72 in. (139.7 x 182.88 cm)
Hannah Perry, Your Ass is Grass (And I’m Gonna Mow It), 2017, Silkcreen on aluminum, digital perplex print on plexiglass, silkscreen on plexiglass, 60 x 72 in. (152.4 x 182.88 cm)
Hannah Perry, Summer of Blocking, 2017, Digital perplex print on plexiglass, 47 x 72 in. (119.38 x 182.88 cm)
Hannah Perry, Trauma Junky, 2017, Plexiglass, crushed car parts, foam, latex, 39 x 55 x 6 in. (99 x 139 x 15.25 cm)
Hannah Perry, Viruses Worth Spreading, 2017, installation view, Arsenal Contemporary NYC