01 Put Me on Your Pedestal
You Can Decorate the Space with My Presence
“Riley uses complex composition and the allure of the female body to draw the viewer into her performance.
Calling upon a vast history of female worship imagery – religious, erotic, and otherwise – she arranges herself into a new idol. Here, within this intentional celebration of her own eroticism, she breathes life into the hollow projections leftover by the men who consume her. In allowing herself to confess to discomfort, she brings forth a new being, one to assume both the ecstasy and distress that Riley contains.
In contemplation with the idol, Riley questions whether the joyful pursuit of sexual liberation can ever be detangled from the internalization of her worth as a sexual object.”
“Post-opening, after the gallery requested a curtain to shield the public from her perceived indecency, the idol gained a new mystique – magnifying the erotic nature of her being. In the days following installation, Riley reflects upon the persistent, triangulated relationship between empowerment, objectification, and shame.”
02 Full Spectrum
PRESS
Images by Cat Sorensen
03 Pussy Portal
“I welcome you to enter my Pussy Portal, a cyber-psychadelic explosion of orgasmic colour and motion. The projection installation is powered by live, experimental programming; a motion-sensing camera; and my personal collection of vintage pornography. The portal transports you to an alternate reality where all things pulsate in technicolour and pleasure reigns supreme. Pussy Portal is a kitschy and chaotic celebration of sexual fantasy and mess.”
04 Attraction/Repulsion
“Giant, iridescent blobs float through space, reacting to the participant’s gesture as they sit within the installation space. Amorphous until interacted with, the blobs are a metaphor for the ambiguous and ultimately unknowable nature of human sexuality, and our societal impulse to force this fluidity into categorical identity structures.”
05 Freeform 2.0
Source material:
I.K.U. (2000) by Shu Lea Cheang
Sex Ritual of the Occult (1970) by Robert Caramico
DILA 英会話東京 by san jose, California, uploaded by samurai king, 2007.