Cactus
Masquerade was the title of an exhibition at Malta Contemporary Art. The title is drawn from Kit Williams’ seminal children’s book from the 70’s illustrating a strange hallucinatory treasure hunt full of complex codes; the hare being the central motif on every page. In this body of work, Douglas White continues his fascination with detritus, breathing new life into decaying materials. Over the course of a month the artist collected and transformed the decaying husks of cacti that cover the Mediterranean landscape.
His attraction to this material for its bone-like and figurative qualities resulted in a series of steel, thread and cactus sculptures. Through the process of hunting, collecting and reforming contrasted with a sharp architectural aesthetic of display, ideas of costume, fetish, prosthesis, emerge. The strange bodily connotations as well as totemic and ritual associations, reanimate these dead materials within a maze-like and coded structure.
