2018
A connection. An act of obscurity. A sense of being. How do we go about protecting ourselves, and
each other? How do we display a human experience as nothing but?
Heat Readings (Brother) is a series of seven digital compilation prints.
The series features Callan Huxtable, Huxtable’s younger, also queer brother. Callan wore sculptural jewellery pieces, which remain somewhat visible as whole objects in the final images.
These works give space to the softness and grit of familial relationships (by blood or by choice), and the protective nature of love. Queer kinship, and friendship, is shown as a visceral force. Use of red hues eludes to the sensation of heat, physical closeness and tension.
The images have no distinguishable human subject, mirroring the ways in which queer familial and/or platonic relationships are rarely shown in wider media. This then aims to address the singular nature of queer representation, and the tokenising of one queer voice amongst cis/het-normative ones.
Object/ person merge together into a warm, connective mass.
Heat Readings (Brother) was exhibited at HAXA House IV, 2018. The print series ran alongside a series of sculptural jewellery (which features in the basal structure of the print work), and a single image from the series was shown (with a corresponding sculptural jewellery piece) at the City of Bayswater Arts Awards in 2018 at The Rise, Maylands.
SAM HUXTABLE 