‘Invert 1’, 2022, 35cm x 40cm. Oil on canvas.

‘Invert 2’, 2022, 35cm x 40cm. Oil on canvas. 

‘Gluck’, 2022, 35cm x 40cm. Oil on canvas. 

‘Radclyffe Hall’, 2022, 35cm x 40cm. Oil on canvas.

During the ‘Elephant x Art Gazette’ residency Bex Massey researched lesbian histories and their lack of mainstream visibility. She therefore experimented with ways in which to document this ‘invisibility’ in paint. Works exhibited form two different lines of investigation surrounding these themes: Firstly via Instagram filters and looking at herself and lesbian consciousness in the present date and secondly working with historical underpainting with a 3D twist in looking at two of her Queer 1930’s hero’s-the painter Gluck and the author Radclyffe Hall. In looking to the present date she took the term ‘invert’, coined by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1897 to describe ‘homosexuals’ and applied it to two images of herself with the aid of the Photoshop’s ‘invert’ tool. These paintings have left her unrecognisable and as such invisible. After which she coded an Instagram filter so that viewers to the show (and available below via QR code) could refashion the paintings into their concealed visage.

In looking to the past Bex centred work on a ’Jack’ – a 19th Century slang term for ‘lesbian’, recently popularised by the BBC’s adaptation of Anne Lister’s diaries in ‘Gentleman Jack. She therefore painted ‘Jack Dawson’ of Leonardo do Caprio and Titanic fame over the two historic and pioneering lesbians and as such rendered them near invisible.

USE BELOW QR CODE WITH PHONE TO VIEW INVERT OF INVERTS VIA PERSONALLY DESIGNED FILTER…