‘RHIP’ by Ocean Dobree

RHIP by Ocean Dobree

I will make a mess, I will refuse to be contained and I will hold ground for the ever certain possibility of being misunderstood.
“Queer mess is to do with asserting the value and pleasure of formations of knowledge that sit outside long-standing institutional hierarchies of research . . . an embodied resistance to sanitary boundaries” – Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier on the Practice of Queer Mess as Research
The work “RHIP” performatively acts to queer the white cube academic landscape through an embodied process of queer messiness. Paint is the vessel and hair, as an extension of the body, is the carrier for these gestures of resistance. The residue, the remains, the energy left behind from “RHIP” hint to an act that refuses to reveal itself in full luminosity. To “RHIP” is to break through the boundaries of academic frameworks for success, to mess with the architecture of the space and embrace the inevitability of failure.

Glasgow School of Art, 2023.
Film and edit by Ocean Dobree
Sound recording by Theo King
Photographs by Samual Temple