Christian Holstad

Two stuffed snakes, a dark male and his floral female mate, lay entwined on the gallery floor. Clutching a bouquet of microphones, they confront the viewer with a wry statement on the privileged social systems that media imagery exploits. In the same breath, this hand-sewn, soft sculpture, typical of Holstad's interest in traditional forms of craftsmanship, invites us to reconsider culturally prescribed notions of gender, domesticity, and high and low art.

Craftwork, and the use of everyday materials, are central to Holstad's practice. Labour-intensive, often collaborative techniques such as sewing, knitting and crocheting feature strongly in his work, embodying his interest in the tactile object and its ability to convey sensuality and comfort while resisting the increasing 'virtuality' of contemporary life. Like the majority of his works, be they drawings, collages or soft, sculptural forms, The Brain Quilt is imbued with a distinctly personal aesthetic symptomatic of a close physical and emotional relationship with its maker. The coloured and colourless forms seem to suggest the vagaries of human memory, or the contrasting sentiments at play in one's mind.

These seven works on paper belong to an ongoing series known as the 'Eraserhead' drawings. Ordinary black-and-white photographs are cut from newspapers; leaving large parts untouched, Holstad carefully erases the ink from other areas to create ghostly, ambiguous voids, rendering their subjects – political figures, landscapes, interiors – deformed and isolated. In their place, details are added in pencil to contort, warp and dramatically recontextualize the original image. This technique, married to the scale and fragile nature of the works, generates a tremendous and highly personal pathos, evoking feelings of loss and fear, and threatening our faith in and experience of media imagery.