Carrion

Carrion is a mesmerizing new solo show by Justin Shoulder. It is a challenging  performance combining dance, music, multi media and modern sculptural practice.

Justin Shoulder is a multi–disciplinary artist who develops work around alter- personas, queer ancestral myths and migration. Carrion is an evolutionary extension that has beckoned its own life from his two earlier shows, also combining masks, costume, and gestural language.

As a mutant cocoon, The Carrion moves across the hazy space shedding its pupa, shape-shifting and forming into a sculpted male figure that resembles a masked avatar.  He appears adaptable in his new apocalyptic habitat, yet alone with an urge to communicate. Mechanical wind-up talking parrots, scattered across the room, chirp and repeat, “I see you” with random abandon. Shoulder’s primitive and tribal practices include the skeletal bone overlay performed in silence, while his quasi-tribal dance reflects a transcending cross-cultural exploration of hybrids.

The spectacular crescendo is the rising of a molecular cloud; the Carrion bird- like emerges from an ulcerated opening with a fierce autonomy. The costume and set designer Mathew Slegh has a clear symbiotic relationship with the development of Carrion.

The electronic musical composition by Corin IIeto and lighting design by Benjamin Cisterne are aesthetically contrasting, providing stark and atmospheric ambiences.

The show has been presented by the Arts House contemporary center for performance and interactive art forms, and the Insite Arts producers who develop work related to cross-genre and cultural platforms.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Bryony Jackson