Curated by Dina Oganova

Form & Function is an exploration of how we are situated within our own skin. The work looks at our experience of being human and our fraught relationship with the body. It challenges the sense of self by capturing a fluidity of identity in an inclusive cast of subjects. These contorted nudes delicately transform what should be intimately familiar into foreign sculptures. In her images, Rosser subverts our idea of the nude and offers a female perspective on a subject area historically dominated by the male gaze. Photographed in this contorted fashion, the body becomes inhuman; a soft machine. Stripped of its identifying features, it no longer invites the usual assumptions or judgements we would make about an individual. Instead we are confronted with a natural object that shifts and morphs as bone and flesh protrude, revealing a strange perspective on the human form. There is a mundanity to the conditions in which we see these uncanny figures. Although pared to a bare minimum, they remain human. The evidence of this appears in a red mark on the skin from a recent scratch, or the subtle imprint of a piece of clothing. Like the domestic spaces in which they are placed, these bodies are lived in: they have their own status as habitat. The “imperfections” remain - stretch marks, scars and scratches on walls. The work explores the relationships between the forms, studying their intimate interactions as they support and rely on each other in these poses. Displayed like something between artwork and furniture, figures are positioned in empty rooms. Subtle familiar markers suggest these spaces to be homes. They are distinctly inhabited but intentionally stripped bare. In Rosser’s work we see people of different skin tones, body shapes and sexualities. Their ages range from twenty to seventy and their genders include female, male, gender fluid and trans. Here, they are treated equally, becoming anonymous structures that confront conventional ideas of beauty. In an age when we are saturated with digitally altered and enhanced imagery, these real, fleshy sculptures challenge how we look at the human body.