Mathew Wayne Parkin

I can fit a fist in my mouth

Blurry still of a pink mouth and white chin with blonde stubble take up two thirds of the right of the image, with three adidas whites stripes on the bottom left.

Preview: 7-9pm, Friday 22nd March
Exhibition: 23 March – 18 May 2024

I can fit a fist in my mouth is a new exhibition and body of work comprising moving-image and sculpture by Leeds-based artist, Mathew Wayne Parkin. In this solo presentation at Cubitt, Parkin engages with acts of withdrawal; censorship; violence; and memorial within intimate relationships, with particular attention given to the ways that ethics and the interpersonal play out in relation to one another.

For a new film, under the same title as the exhibition, they have invited a group of people, with whom they hold varying forms and degrees of intimacy, to audio-describe a series of vignettes, gestures, and brief moments. These have been drawn from their personal archive of footage of family members, ex-partners, lovers, and friends.

Referring to modes of conversation that are akin to sparring and forms of violence within dialogue, Parkin’s newly-commissioned work grapples with; boundaries between bodies; moments of breakage in dialogue; violence in love. It does so through various intimate moments and movements; a laugh; a pause; a breath or reverb.

Language and gestures feature as both physical realities and speculative metaphors for examining closeness – blows come from breaths and sighs as much as fists thrown; words spill from mouths only to be filled by these same titular fists; gut instinct is relied upon in descriptions of unseen images, and punches to the gut are received.

Accompanying the film are new sculptures including a love-seat made with readily-available materials, and exhibition barriers adorned with love locks that interact with and partition the gallery space. These accompany keyrings, locks, and other engagements distributed throughout the exhibition that collectively act as motifs of support, safety, confinement, and submission in differing contexts – and exist on a spectrum of which one end is care and the other is control.

Sound for the film was developed in dialogue with, and by sound designer Claude Nouk, several people known to the artist were invited to act as audio describers, and guidance on access and audio description was gratefully received by Mathew from Elaine Joseph (SoundScribe).

This exhibition is supported by Leeds Inspired, and Radar, Loughborough University, whilst part of this work was developed during a residency with SERF, Leeds.

Exhibition in Review: Frieze Magazine
Exhibition in Review: Fetch Magazine
Exhibition in Review: Art Monthly

More info here

Installation image of a white gallery with a large screen splitting the space into two. In the foreground are green chairs tied together like loveseats. On the screen is a blue inverted image of a fist going into a bearded mouth.
Installation image of a white gallery with orange lighting and a large screen splitting the space into two. In the foreground are green chairs tied together like loveseats. On the screen is a blurry mouth on a light skinned chin with a caption below reading ‘[‘Better off Alone’ by Alice Deejay plays softly in the background, sounds of a camera being handled]’, and at the top of the screen ‘[North West English Accent] A pair of lips and a light skin jaw cropped by the camera mouth the words to Alice Deejay’s ‘Better off Alone’ and drinking beer wearing a visible three stripes adidas top’.
Installation image of a white gallery with a video projection on the back wall of a bathroom shelf with various objects including a plant, a candle and a afro pick black fist comb. In the foreground are green chairs tied together like loveseats.
Installation image of a white gallery with orange lighting and a large screen splitting the space into two. . On the screen isA a pair of lips and a light skin jaw cropped by the camera. In the background is a metal barrier sculpture.
Installation image of a white gallery with orange lighting. In the foreground is a low uneven sculpture made from metal gallery barriers and an assortment of keyring and padlocks. On the back wall is paper in a plastic wallet pinned up. The floor is a rough grey concrete.
On a wooden surface is an a4 expressionistic drawing in gold pen of a mans face attached to the wall in a plastic wallet with a strip of masking tape. Below left a horizontal beam of wood has a gold earring piercing it where a nipple would be.
Installation image of a detail shot of a sculpture in a white gallery with orange lighting and a rough grey concrete floor. Between two metal gallery barriers the wire is sagging during to the weight of an assortment of keyring and padlocks bunched together.
Installation image of a white gallery with orange lighting and a large wooden screen splitting the space into two. We took from the back of the screen to a projection on a wall of a pair of lips and a light skin jaw cropped by the camera in front of green chairs tied together like loveseats. On the wooden wall s an a4 expressionistic drawing in gold pen of a mans face attached to the wall in a plastic wallet with a strip of masking tape. Below left a horizontal beam of wood has a gold earring piercing it where a nipple would be.
On a white wall inside an a4 plastic wallet is an a5 piece of notebook paper with a spider diagram. At the centre of the diagram is a the work LANGUAGE, and coming off around it in corners are the words VIOLENCE, SEX, ADVENTURE and ROMANCE.