Diana Thorneycroft

Macabre creatures from hell spawned by the pandemic.

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Winnipeg multimedia artist Diana Thorneycroft was born for the pandemic. Illness has long been a subtext in her work, in part, because of reverberations from a prolonged, traumatic childhood stay in a hospital attached to machines that would scare any kid. And now, a body of figurative work she began shortly before COVID-19 disrupted the world has seamlessly evolved into spooky, perversely erotic art for this year of living dangerously.

Thorneycroft’s latest menagerie of macabre figures – in drawings, photographs and sculpture – include surreal beings spreading sickness from their mouths and other bodily orifices. Sometimes super-long tongues, penises and invented appendages actually penetrate a nearby person, fulfilling a deadly destiny. Consider this contagion as acts of spewing, to use Thorneycroft’s term.

These creepy harlequin creatures are gathered in an exhibition titled Carnival of Tails, Tongues and Other Protrusions at the Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina from May 27 to July 3. If you love that show, you may want to visit the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery, an hour to the west, to see the latest iteration of Herd, a much-travelled Thorneycroft exhibition of deformed toy plastic horses galloping towards an unknown fate. These days you might call that installation, which runs from May 28 to Aug. 15, the COVID Stampede.

At Slate, protruding tongues, as devious and devilish as the serpent’s tongue in the Garden of Eden, are everywhere. Thorneycroft explains in her artist’s statement: “I see them (using a quote from the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin), as the site where ‘the body goes outside to meet the world.’ In my drawings, open mouths and articulated tongues allow for a multiplicity of meanings, ranging from vulnerability to protection and aggression.”

Indeed, during the pandemic, when tongues are supposed to be hidden behind face masks, their exposure seems as sinful and unwelcome as a male flasher exposing himself to a shocked woman.

“My drawings have been affected by THE VIRUS of course,” Thorneycroft writes in an email exchange. “I’ve always been interested in tongues and open mouths, but the idea of ‘spew’ has taken on new meaning. I’ve started a Consensual Transmission Fluid series and will continue to add to it as inspiration hits.”

The drawing Consensual Transmission of Fluid #1 at Slate shows an armless nude woman with an elongated tongue spewing into the open mouth of a legless woman with a fluffy tail. The left arm of the recipient penetrates the other’s chest right through the heart.

Think of the drawing as a less genteel version of Los Dos Fridas, the iconic Frida Kahlo painting that shows two identical Fridas exchanging blood through an artery that stretches from one heart to the other.

The Slate exhibition is dominated by drawings of bizarre humanoids, both in colour and black and white, but there are also sculptures, as well as photographs and drawings of sculptures. Die-hard Thorneycroft fans will undoubtedly be drawn to the sculptural works. Thorneycroft has long photographed dioramas created from much-abused dolls and other toys. But seeing the actual 3D pieces is rare.

One poor doll-sized chap holding a pistol, Guard on the Edge, has a horse’s leg along with a shriveled human leg. In the 3D version, he looks more menacing than in the drawing or photograph, yet he remains vulnerable.

Also striking is Birdmen on Sentinel Poles. The birdmen are G.I. Joes deformed by heat. They have wooden bird heads, some with wide-open beaks. The figures are spiked on sticks and decorated with rabbit fur, sinew, rope and other paraphernalia.

What are they about? Perhaps ask Hieronymous Bosch. Indeed, Thorneycroft sees elements of Bosch’s nightmarish scenarios in her mutants. So, be prepared for a freak show – creatures from hell spawned by a pandemic – in Thorneycroft’s bizarre carnival. ■  

Diana Thorneycroft: Carnival of Tails, Tongues and Other Protrusions at the Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina from May 27 to July 3, 2021. Herd is at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery from May 28 to Aug. 15, 2021.

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Slate Fine Art Gallery

3424 13 Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan S4T 1P7

306-775-0300

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