Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art
 

Oren Shoesmith

A photo of a sunny bogland landscape, golden brown in late afternoon sunlight. At the top text reads ‘Corpores Infames’ in a font made from drawings of nude people shaping their bodies into the letters. Shadows of 3 people creep across the grass on the left foreground. In the centre foreground two pools of water sit in the bogland. On the right foreground a photoshopped black ink drawing of a bog butter container on its side appears like it has spilled its contents out into the pool.
Belladonna Paloma, Oren Shoesmith and Rabindranath X Bhose, Corpores Infames, 2024
Courtesy of the artists
A photograph showing a sun-bleached greyish lambs skull against a white wall. On the top of the forehead of the skull, in bright fluorescent pink paint, an egg with its shadow behind it has been painted.
Belladonna Paloma, Egg Anointed Skull, 2023
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Peter Otto
a close up of a person performing in front of a green hill with an old stone building on top. He is covered with a muddy mixture, wearing a pink neckerchief with a bare chest. His head is tilted, his eyes are closed and he looks blissful. There are two people watching him in the background.
Rabindranath X Bhose, Body of the Bog, 2023
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Sean Patrick Campbell
An oval ceramic plate on a white wall. The ceramic is a tan brown colour with an inky black drawing of a monk bending over a stone dolman in prayer. In front there are two crutches in the grass, crossed over each other. Above, some clouds and a round moon are visible.
Oren Shoesmith, 2023
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Rabindranath X Bhose

Rabindranath X Bhose,  Belladonna Paloma and Oren Shoesmith are three friends and co-conspirators who form a boggy trans crip collective. They collaborate on bog-related projects, in devotion to the ecological potency of wetlands.

The images shown above represent the Glasgow International 2024 project that Oren Shoesmith this participating in, as well as the artist’s individual practice.

Oren Shoesmith is a Cornish artist and writer living in Glasgow. He works with poetry, sculpture and performance. His practice focuses on a space between the sacred and profane, using religious iconoclasm and land rites to think through the transcendent position of the trans, mad and sick body. He was artist in residence at the Glasgow Ceramics Studio with Saltspace, and showed in the resulting exhibition ‘Uncertain Futures’ at Saltspace, Glasgow, in 2024. In 2023, he was an invited contributor to the Clay Commons at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop as well as being an artist in residence through SSW’s Caregiver’s residency programme in collaboration with Counterflows. Oren was commissioned by the Museum of English Rural Life and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in 2021, responding to their projects Queer Rural Connections and Queering the Archive. He is a contributing writer to Sticky Fingers’ forthcoming publication, Designing on Crip Time. Oren graduated from alternative arts programme, School of the Damned in 2019 and is a current committee member of Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. He is committed to helping build care practices and methods of resistance within his community through DIY and peer learning spaces.

Projects

  • Programme
    Oren Shoesmith
    Corpores Infames: Disreputable Bodies
    Lenzie Moss
    A photo of a sunny bogland landscape, golden brown in late afternoon sunlight. At the top text reads ‘Corpores Infames’ in a font made from drawings of nude people shaping their bodies into the letters. Shadows of 3 people creep across the grass on the left foreground. In the centre foreground two pools of water sit in the bogland. On the right foreground a photoshopped black ink drawing of a bog butter container on its side appears like it has spilled its contents out into the pool.