A series of works were produced for 'Gothic Pleasures' with the intention of exploring the psychological tensions that play out in terms of understanding the gothic as a site of excess and transformation. Particular film and literature references are used to create characters that might embody the notion of the gothic and put upon, afflicted heroine. In a contemporary context , does this become comic and absurd or tragic? Two pairs of swooning ceramic figures were made as a homage to Peter Weir's 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'(1976), a classic fainting girls film with memorable scenes of infectious communal hysteria where collapse becomes an almost erotic and bodied experience. A silver tipped oar in another work alludes to a scene in The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans), when Maggie Tulliver's spends too long drifting down stream in a boat with a member of the opposite sex- compromising her reputation. An additional work is a type of ghost stone memorial that examines the gothic trope of the mourned dead bride: Edgar Allen Poe's Ligeia (1838). The group exhibition was curated by Emma Hill. Other exhibiters were Arabel Rosillo de Blas, Elaine Brown, Harriet Mena Hill and Sarah Sparkes
