Bethia Howard

Sculpture (MA)

About

Dark wooden stakes, poppet dolls, ceramic bones and iron nails perch on the precipice of art practice and something less manicured; ritual and liturgical. A series of familiar objects, altered by carving, stabbing, or placing. Objects made ‘wrong’. These are to be perceived in conjunction with my writings, projected into the space at the speed I read them.

I am concerned with the transgressions of discrimination under the protection of religion- issues of gender, class, sexuality. The history of witchcraft. The consequent subjugation of women, how it has been misrepresented. To believe and to be believed, and what this meant for women of that time. How this has had a lasting effect. These themes appear in the writing, they charge the objects, turning them from ritual to conceptual. 

Understanding any work is a process. I am happy for the audience to cease understanding halfway through the process. This will encourage them to have an original experience with the work. My invitation is not to make demands or claims, but to come and be with the work, to listen and exist with it. 

@bethiahowardart on Instagram.

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