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As the culmination of a two year residency at Mutton Fist Press,

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 http://www.muttonfistpress.com/

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 David Holah presents:

 

                                         “TiN-ah FeTcH Me-h“

 

 

This work is a memorial to Frank and Eric, two important men in David’s Herstory. It’s a lace-front wig slipped down to act as a funeral veil. The show is about the concealment created by this closeness of fabric to face: he can see out, you can’t see in. Viewers are invited to snatch a glimpse of his grief through the teeth of his brother’s zips or the slight of a fluttering, paper hand.

 

The show is also a celebration of performative pedagogy: at a tbc stage in the show’s unfurling across nine days, David will run an offset printing workshop in Mutton Fist, and in drag.

 

David and his print mentor Frank played out ‘Mommie Dearest’ together in print lessons; shouting lines from the biopic to each other across the workshop. NO WIRE HANGERS! Is the in-joke, the script of a friendship. TINA! BRING ME THE AXE!!

 

Within this work, Baby Jane is sucked into the drama, and Bette and Joan’s tensions are played out, trapped together in one body. David’s soft sculptures are dazzle ships: Playing card chimera twirl to show you their embroidered backs, sewn with brother Eric’s threads. Queens of Hearts and other parts. David is your croupier, and a mistress of misdirection. To share space with the sculptures is to become lost in the menacing mock eyes of moth wings. There is a game being played, the cards are marked.

 

On the walls is a portrait gallery of the mouthless ones: Mediated, monitored managed. David’s work is about obfuscation and camouflage. Mouths unformed are healed gashes. Zippered gobs are for opening up and shutting down. With David as mad scientist, the creatures are recycled icons that speak in Ouija anagrams, and they are beautiful.