pain folds its legs: Emelia Kerr Beale

pain folds its legs invites viewers to look downwards in reference to the horizontality of bed rest so central to chronic pain experiences. Motivated by the desire to harness chronic pain as a generative force, Emelia Kerr Beale presents new work in sculpture and ceramic to explore making with, through, and for pain.

Influenced by the animals that represented human experience in Medieval Bestiaries, the sculpted dog, twisted and folded in sleep, expands on their ongoing exploration of health complexity through non-human forms. By decentering ‘the’ body, the work seeks to encourage broader, more expansive thinking about what bodies are or can be.

Emelia Kerr Beale works to process the complexities of illness and create space for multiplicity, underpinned by feminist disability studies and lived experience. Recent projects include Platform:2022, Institute Français Écosse, Edinburgh (2022), Bathing Nervous Limbs, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2021) and Hospitalfield’s Graduate Programme, Arbroath (2021-2022).

Alice Hill-Woods is an (art)writer, editor and researcher working across disciplines. She is in her second year of the Master of Letters in Art Writing programme at the Glasgow School of Art, and works for the National Emergencies Trust in London. She is the author of HOTHOUSE (Saló Press, 2021), and her research on trauma ecologies was recently published in the Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies. In 2020, she was the recipient of a Wellcome Trust studentship, which supported her in completing an MA in Medical History and Humanities from the University of York.