Animal: Cate Consandine and Stephen Garrett

Read the exhibition text by Dr Kyla McFarlane.

Sarah Scout Presents is delighted to announce Animal, the third exhibition together by Cate Consandine and Stephen Garrett. Animal continues the unfolding dialogue between the two artists, presenting work that challenges dominant paradigms of sexual power and gender while harnessing the historic decadence in which power and privilege exist. 

Consandine presents Viraginis―a bold and stunning new large-scale bronze sculpture that reaches deep into the heart of her figurative practice through the expressive and powerful torsion of the female form. Garrett presents a selection of photographic works from his new series Peribat. Fuelled by love, heartbreak and rage, these photographs show a love affair which unfolds and is retold through the camera lens; a tender and complex reading of gay male relationships and sex. Together the works comprise a language of seductive beauty, sensuality and abject desire.

Animal reveals—and revels in—libidinal desires that so often remain hidden. In its tough and unabashed sexuality, this exhibition provides the perfect antidote to our recent, heavily constrained lockdown lives. These significant new works are brave and uncompromising, decadent, slightly scandalous and incredibly beautiful.

Image: Stephen Garrett, Faucium (Throat Throttle Choke) 2022 (detail), archival print on Hahnemühle Photo 100% cotton paper, 165.8 x 111.8 cm, framed