This artwork is part of the Hungry Lungs series, for which the following text was written. 

 Change is life’s inevitable companion; devoted to one another - a symbiosis. Shifts can take place rapidly, monumentally or cursory, propelling nature into a continual state of adaptation; an ineffable metamorphosis. What may first appear as misfortune transmutes and divides, compelling one to change position, to grow, to acquire: to evolve. Change triples its image, urging us to capitalise on an opportunity to learn, both subjectively and on a broader political scale. 

 Change destabilizes, provokes, heightens our fears and anxieties as our animal passions flare up in fight or flight. Incubating on a phenomenology of panic we seek escape from the psychic torture of realities we find intolerable; libidinal energy shifts to resist rupture and manage the unbearable. The same ideological gloss is seen in its inversion: sudden change releases us, severing our attachment to the Imaginary. Stagnation is agitated and we embrace its vertigo in dialectical prefiguration.   Hungry Lungs speaks to the unforeseen, a staggering rhetorical shift that generates a primitive craving for the familiar. A cathexis towards the before. 

The work confronts us, provokes us with eyes of examination whilst simultaneously offering a departure from the every day. We’re invited to explore new environments, exuberantly budding, diving head first into a change that births us into existence.

Deaf Mute

Beyond Everywhere

The Soft Centre of Bone

Teaser video created for Hungry Lungs solo exhibition at Gudberg Nerger Gallery in Hamburg 2020. 

Filming and editing | Daniel Maciel 
Music | Ian Medina 

Hungry Lungs | Exhibition teaser video

This artwork is part of the Hungry Lungs series, for which the following text was written

Change is life’s inevitable companion; devoted to one another - a symbiosis. Shifts can take place rapidly, monumentally or cursory, propelling nature into a continual state of adaptation; an ineffable metamorphosis. What may first appear as misfortune transmutes and divides, compelling one to change position, to grow, to acquire: to evolve. Change triples its image, urging us to capitalise on an opportunity to learn, both subjectively and on a broader political scale. 

Change destabilizes, provokes, heightens our fears and anxieties as our animal passions flare up in fight or flight. Incubating on a phenomenology of panic we seek escape from the psychic torture of realities we find intolerable; libidinal energy shifts to resist rupture and manage the unbearable. The same ideological gloss is seen in its inversion: sudden change releases us, severing our attachment to the Imaginary. Stagnation is agitated and we embrace its vertigo in dialectical prefiguration.  

Hungry Lungs speaks to the unforeseen, a staggering rhetorical shift that generates a primitive craving for the familiar. A cathexis towards the before. The work confronts us, provokes us with eyes of examination whilst simultaneously offering a departure from the every day.  We’re invited to explore new environments, exuberantly budding, diving head first into a change that births us into existence.  


Chinese Whispers, etching on Zerkall 250gsm printing paper, plate 39.5cm x 33cm, paper 68cm x 54cm, edition of 5

This artwork is part of The Forest As An Alternate Kingdom series, for which the following text was written.

The Forest As An Alternate Kingdom reflects a search for refuge from the pervasiveness and obligations of the digital and social realm. I accepted a residency on the rural island of Fyn in Denmark last September (2017), where I had the possibility to live and make work for a month without electricity or internet, enjoying a simpler existence, eating fruits and vegetables that were grown in the garden and spending evenings by the fire with only candles for light. It emphasized for me a need for separation from the duty of the social realm, both in its digital form, as well as in real life. I wanted to immerse myself in nature, in the forest, which I saw as the antithesis to the cultural sphere of the city.
 
This series of paintings started out as an attempt to portray that space, an almost mythological understanding of nature as a place uncultivated by human hands. I imagined the works as expressing the need for sanctuary in a displaced state of being and as reflecting a need to maintain basic physical connections, both between humans as well as between human and nature.
 
In the finished paintings, however, this initial train of thought and its manifestations does not appear so present. In its place is a scenario that looks and feels highly artificial and constructed. Sickly pastel tones, vast black voids and bizarre multi-coloured abstract shapes offer transportation into an alternate realm, where auras are visible and perspective and light appear to follow other rules.  The blur between 2 and 3 dimensional objects within the paintings reveals an unknown world and sense of insecurity. The peculiarity of the creatures is suggestive of a kind of chaos and disarray; The fact that this fictitious forest is inhabited by animals that normally do not belong there gives the impression of an underlying fear, of what was thought stable and solid beginning to unravel and dissolve. The portrayed bodies resemble manikins, action figures, toys with unnatural and awkward poses. There is a fakeness to them, as if they are floating in a parallel virtual landscape. Nature is present, but not as the contrast to the cultural and populated world, instead the natural elements that can be found in the paintings are mainly the result of human interaction with nature.
 
Therefore, and contrary to my first intention, this series of paintings is not the natural alternative to an aggressively pervading social reality. Rather it evokes the association of a further fake realm, difficult to break away from. The desperation to nevertheless attempt that escape seeps through these works and rather than having a tranquil effect, that an escape to nature would produce, the works are unnerving, as they seem to suck the viewer into yet another artificial and highly constructed reality from which the way out is not easily discernible.


Ugly Duckling 2018 oil on canvas 120cm x 120cm

I Am Real I Am Not Real 2018 oil on canvas 118cm x 149cm

This artwork is part of the The Forest As An Alternate Kingdom series, for which the following text was written.

The Forest As An Alternate Kingdom reflects a search for refuge from the pervasiveness and obligations of the digital and social realm. I accepted a residency on the rural island of Fyn in Denmark last September (2017), where I had the possibility to live and make work for a month without electricity or internet, enjoying a simpler existence, eating fruits and vegetables that were grown in the garden and spending evenings by the fire with only candles for light. It emphasized for me a need for separation from the duty of the social realm, both in its digital form, as well as in real life. I wanted to immerse myself in nature, in the forest, which I saw as the antithesis to the cultural sphere of the city.
 
This series of paintings started out as an attempt to portray that space, an almost mythological understanding of nature as a place uncultivated by human hands. I imagined the works as expressing the need for sanctuary in a displaced state of being and as reflecting a need to maintain basic physical connections, both between humans as well as between human and nature.
 
In the finished paintings, however, this initial train of thought and its manifestations does not appear so present. In its place is a scenario that looks and feels highly artificial and constructed. Sickly pastel tones, vast black voids and bizarre multi-coloured abstract shapes offer transportation into an alternate realm, where auras are visible and perspective and light appear to follow other rules.  The blur between 2 and 3 dimensional objects within the paintings reveals an unknown world and sense of insecurity. The peculiarity of the creatures is suggestive of a kind of chaos and disarray; The fact that this fictitious forest is inhabited by animals that normally do not belong there gives the impression of an underlying fear, of what was thought stable and solid beginning to unravel and dissolve. The portrayed bodies resemble manikins, action figures, toys with unnatural and awkward poses. There is a fakeness to them, as if they are floating in a parallel virtual landscape. Nature is present, but not as the contrast to the cultural and populated world, instead the natural elements that can be found in the paintings are mainly the result of human interaction with nature.
 
Therefore, and contrary to my first intention, this series of paintings is not the natural alternative to an aggressively pervading social reality. Rather it evokes the association of a further fake realm, difficult to break away from. The desperation to nevertheless attempt that escape seeps through these works and rather than having a tranquil effect, that an escape to nature would produce, the works are unnerving, as they seem to suck the viewer into yet another artificial and highly constructed reality from which the way out is not easily discernible.


The Forest As An Alternate Kingdom 2018 oil on canvas 135cm x 135cm

Change is life’s inevitable companion; devoted to one another - a symbiosis. Shifts can take place rapidly, monumentally or cursory, propelling nature into a continual state of adaptation; an ineffable metamorphosis. What may first appear as misfortune transmutes and divides, compelling one to change position, to grow, to acquire: to evolve. Change triples its image, urging us to capitalise on an opportunity to learn, both subjectively and on a broader political scale. 

Change destabilizes, provokes, heightens our fears and anxieties as our animal passions flare up in fight or flight. Incubating on a phenomenology of panic we seek escape from the psychic torture of realities we find intolerable; libidinal energy shifts to resist rupture and manage the unbearable. The same ideological gloss is seen in its inversion: sudden change releases us, severing our attachment to the Imaginary. Stagnation is agitated and we embrace its vertigo in dialectical prefiguration.  

Hungry Lungs speaks to the unforeseen, a staggering rhetorical shift that generates a primitive craving for the familiar. A cathexis towards the before. The work confronts us, provokes us with eyes of examination whilst simultaneously offering a departure from the every day.  We’re invited to explore new environments, exuberantly budding, diving head first into a change that births us into existence.  

Hungry Lungs - systematic change

In humane | 2015
 
These works explore disguises and entrapment, both within ourselves and the people who surround us. Also delving into the movement of power and vulnerability which exists within relationships and how people can attempt to project their control onto others.
 
‘At first glance it is an emperor who stands before, faceted with wealth and splendor, to entice in the eager and vulnerable. The bulbus cloak swells, perhaps from others who have before been lured into its grasp. Like a bird in spring it puffs itself out, in an attempt to express its power, attractiveness and desirability. But it is merely empty, bloated with an ugly arrogance. It feeds on others.
 
A flattering front soon melts into disbelief, a gulp and you are swallowed. Inside is an eerie darkness and a stagnant stench, you wonder if you are the first. You begin to feel your self-belief being distinguished and you remain demoralized and trapped. Then you turn around and see, the one who went before. Suddenly you have a sense of being swept out into the universe, surrounded by nothing but stars and no paths insight. ‘  
 
(Jill Tegan Doherty, notebook, March, 2016)

Jill Tegan Doherty is an Artist from Nottingham, England. She graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London in 2006 and now lives and works in Berlin.

Dohertys work up to now, has been filled with twisted geological forms and unnerving combinations of the human and animal. The uncertain and unseen are provided with a visual platform to be physically digested. The canvas becomes a stage for the subconscious to perform its role in the ‘physical’ world, to act out its twisted plays. Dohertys paintings present us with a curious and delectable dish that will not necessarily be smoothly digested nor nourish its spectator.

Physical instability surfaces in the work through an almost playful act, strongly pronounced with the use of metaphorical animal and bird heads morphed with human figures. Not only crossing the line between natures creatures but also the line between the physical, non-physical, conscious and unconscious states of being.

Swimming effortlessly between mediums and materials, Dohertys ideas stem also into sculpture, installation and most recently etching. Her work speaks to us of the human condition, and our place in the world.


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Jill Tegan Doherty