Caitlin Devoy

Biography

“Devoy's work is full of startling contradictions. Both viscerally unnerving and oddly seductive. Pornographic and neutered. Excoriating and tender. Hilariously, decadently camp, but with a deadly serious intent. They are utterly fresh yet somehow ancient, like a pair of nipple tassels fluttering in a primaeval breeze.”
Hera Lindsay Bird

Born 1976, lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington

Caitlin Devoy’s work is simultaneously seductive and unnerving, sensual and neutered, excoriating and tender. Devoy’s practice embraces the transgressive power of the comedic as both honey and sting, revealing the power relations encoded in representations of the body. The sculptures subvert everyday objects whose specific functions and tactile associations are familiar to the viewer. Her material choices underscore the humour, imbuing the objects with bodily characteristics and undermining binary representations of masculinity and femininity.

“Mounds shiver. Nipples pop. Slime bubbles. Devoy’s works are indecently alive. They lie trembling on the brink of apprehension, inviting the viewer into a slow and intimate dance, teasing and eluding, in erotic pastiche and soft pink seriousness. Deliciously tactile, it’s impossible not to want to reach out and touch. To flick. To stroke. To blow. To slap. The viewer becomes voyeur, subject in a sea of possible nouns.”
Hera Lindsay Bird

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Works