Examining uncertainty in the face of an ever-shifting reality is central to Jacqueline Huskissons art practice. Her exhibition, Liminal Spaces, embraces the uncanny. Taking the familiar setting of a home, she unceremoniously nudges it off its axissolid reality slips, with the fiction seeping in around the edges. Unsettled, we search the frames, looking for the precise cause of our disquiet, venturing further and further into this altered world.
Huskisson looks to the 80s and 90s for inspiration. Leaning into the aesthetic of graphic novels and video games from the era, she adapts their classic grids and frames to lend structure to her narratives. Blending painting and printmaking, Huskisson sets humanoid figures inside cramped roomsthe floors and walls pitch and slop, contracting in on the figures.
It is an in-between space, marked by uncertainty and transition, Huskisson says. While in a liminal space, we can feel frozen, slightly unsettled, we recognize something familiar, but something feels…off. I, myself, feel as though I am stuck in a perpetual transition.
For Huskisson, growing up in the 90s was a time marked by an unnerving transition. While Huskisson was sorting out who she was, society at large bore the lumbering awkwardness of transitioning from an analogue to a digital world at lightning speed. Like many who shared the same experience, it was a time that left an indelible mark.
I want to allow the viewer to experience the work and find their own narrative amongst my characters. My artworks are ultimately questions to viewers about their own perceptions on modern life, she adds.
