Alexis Boyle
I create for big dreams, bad dreams, for bubbling gurgling laughter and for shame. For fear, love, freedom, and embarrassment. Braving the ripe and rotten, I muck around in the psychological and emotional debris of what has been left unsaid and I use art to blurt it out loud. Marked by the struggles and celebrations of daily life, my approach is fueled by an excess of nervous energy, and the need to engage with others. My work focuses primarily on bodies: those sensuous, leaky, beautiful, and grotesque basins of surprises. It is my goal to engage the viewer’s awareness of their own body through unexpected yet familiar references by using a variety of media. My creative process is informed by a strong background in both two and three-dimensional practices including painting, drawing, sculpture, fibres, performance and installation.
Through public performances in high-traffic areas at peak commuting hours, I interrupt city dwellers’ static and predictable routines. As a virtuous warrior out to pierce the urban mundane, I highlight the funny, fantastic, and pathetic qualities of being human by wearing stitched artworks I call “extraspection suits“. These are designed to explore extraverted displays of introspection, or extraspection, making light of human experience by exploiting my own emotions, dreams, and doubts. Similarly, I work with the same subject matter in my painting and drawing practice, and am forever experimenting with new materials and methods of making.
