Kerrie Addy's multidisciplinary practice examines the intricate position fear inhabits within society and psyche, both physically and metaphysically. Her paintings develop enigmatic narratives established from her research and writing, with coherent figuration blurring into absurdist symbolism. Capturing moments of slippage within worlds that are both rooted within and parallel to reality, she aims to distort our understanding of the ‘domestic’ by introducing suggestions of the otherworldly through an investigation of the eerie.
Addy's work inquires into the use of fear as both tool and material, and the many ways it is manipulated by those who wield it - whether as a means to power, to swell profit, as integral to the lucrative healing and wellness industries, or as a device in art history, literature and film. Like the latter, her intention is to capture a visceral sense of lingering unease, the underlying anxiety one can't quite name that sits somewhere within the surface. She imagines her paintings as hijacked film stills, experimenting with perspective, confusing the colour grade, cramming the ghosts of narrative into the frame - breached thumbnails undefined by linear trajectories.
She is interested in how personal trauma intersects with persistent collective existential risk, and how the past pertains to the present: are our fears intensified by living in a world where a new possibility for destruction greets us daily? In a time where autocracy is on the rise in the name of progress, is empathy a human frailty in the minds of the progress makers, and will this lead to societal collapse? Addy paints unresolved compositions reflecting the fractured and haunting nature of memory post-trauma. Her paintings doubt themselves and change their minds - the irony of being a painter who's scared of her own hand is a tool she has used to create her visual language. Her intention is to depict experience coexisting and layering simultaneously, contradicting realities escaping our bodies and meandering through the rooms they've occupied like smoke, imprinting into all surfaces, a clinging residue like the tar from her grandmother's cigarettes.