Page 22 - 9781909825130_pdf.indd

Dorcas Casey
Born 1983
Lives and works in Bristol, UK
www.dorcascasey.com
The impulse to make sculptures based on recurring motifs of animals in
her dreams is what fuels Dorcas Casey’s practice. These images come
with an intrinsic sense of vitality and importance and demand to be
made into something physical. Seeking to translate the mysterious
power of these dreams into tangible objects, Casey creates sculptures
that appear uncanny and ambiguous. For her, these sculptures embody
a myriad of emotions and sensations in one piece; exploring the
unconscious associations we have with familiar creatures.

Dreams reactivate the underlying, forgotten, repressed things confi ned
to the unconscious and memories. Casey is obsessed with collecting
and hoarding what she sees as the physical equivalent of this ‘dream
material’; the left-behind, the forgotten objects which end up stored in
an attic, at the dump, or which resurface at the fl ea market. Casey enjoys
the challenge of reanimating these charged objects by incorporating
them into her work. Using craft-based processes such as hand stitching,
she transforms more malleable materials like gloves, socks and other
clothing fabrics into her fi gurative sculptures.

Through her work Casey likes to reveal the unsettling qualities
residing in seemingly benign domestic materials and subjects,
creating a tension between her sculptures appearing familiar and
comforting, and simultaneously peculiar and uncanny. Casey enjoys
the idea of outmoded, discarded and marginal things returning as
powerful presences.
DORCAS CASEY graduated in 2011 with a fi rst class BA Hons in Sculpture from
Winchester School of Art and is now based in Bristol. Since graduating Casey
has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. In 2013 she won the Public
Speaks Award in the Broomhill National Sculpture Prize and a Bursary Award from
the Royal British Society of Sculptors.

Top: Bull, 2011, hand stitched fabric, furniture, mixed media.
h: 120cm w: 200cm d: 120cm, Artist’s Collection.
Photograph Credit: Jasper Casey.
Right: Goat, 2011, hand stitched fabric, furniture, mixed media.
h: 140cm w: 90cm d: 90cm, Artist’s Collection.
Far right: Sow, 2011, hand stitched fabric, furniture, mixed media.
h: 120cm w: 90cm d: 90cm, Artist’s Collection.
Photograph Credit: Alick Cotterill.

22 23