Alexander Luke Osborne – Prestige

The above picture shows a shop display stand I found at car boot sale for £2. I bought it because I thought it looked similar to a stomach shape. This was the original structure of my stomach, and it represents the reconstructive work the surgeons tried to do by rebuilding my stomach. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful and my stomach was removed.

I reflected on the structure for around a month after buying it. Every person has a stomach which starts off as normal, which the display unit represents. Due to disease, my stomach structure could not remain as ‘normal’. I suddenly got an idea to reflect on my hospital experiences in connection with the stomach surgery.

I was in so much pain in hospital and did not want to live anymore. Horrible time. Barbed wire and black hooks represent the terrible pain which was like someone ripping my stomach apart. The hooks represent the ripping sensation of pain when I was moved about. No matter how much morphine I had, it was unbearable and I just wanted it to end.

The barbed wire and fixing bands I bought from Jewson’s and built this around the original structure. The rake was also from a car boot sale. I have never been so excited to see a rake, as it was just what I was searching for!!!

The finished sculpture represents the attempts of the surgeons at rebuilding my stomach, but failed. The finished result also conveys my physical pain to the audience. It is a representation of my journey through surgery and pain.

I bought these two Mannequins from eBay. There is a sort uncanny-ness, between them…

The Uncanny in Freud;

Turning to psychoanalysis in the context of doll images is not motivated just by the fact that Freud used the example of the doll as central case to illustrate the idea of the uncanny [..] but from the fact that psychoanalysis opens up the possibility of thinking about dolls as constituting an image in which pleasure and displeasure, living beauty and uncanny in-animation, are conflated.

This very idea that the doll represents the impossible encounter between innocent beauty and uncanny effects (the uncanny being, according to Freud, one type of anxiety that the encounter with art can elicit) may provide a preliminary explanation to my interest in the doll image and account for the choice of such images in order to consider the possibility of an aesthetics that exceeds the distinction between beauty and its opposites, between the pleasing and the anxiety-provoking object.

The Doll, Look the Doll in the Eyes: The Uncanny in Contemporary Art.

by Ruth Ronen                                                                                                         January 1, 2004

With one of the Mannequins, I decided to represent my Stroke…

With the other, I when’t right back to the beginning…

I haven’t got many veins, due to the cancer treatment when I was age two years of age…

When I was in Hospital they could not get access to any veins. The only option, was to get the blood out of my neck. From today, it takes three attempts, for them to access my veins…

Here is one of the final scenes from Resident Evil…

Here is a scene from Saw 2…

Here is a clip from Hellraiser IV: Bloodline

I wanted to represent this image of me trying to get blood out of anywhere I can. I know now, how it feels to be a Crack head!!!

Referenced Franko B – I Miss You…

Franko had canulars put into his arms, letting all the blood drip out onto the clean floor. He almost always paints himself completely white each time he does his performances, to hide his scars. His tattoo’s.

I have taken inspiration from Katarzyna Konieczka…

Easter Bunny!
Costume design Katarzyna Konieczka
Photo by marcintwardowski.com — with Edwige Galli.