Beastliness

'Beastliness' 2011 is an animated video made from photomontage works in which a fantastic bestiary of creatures and women dance and morph, becoming each other and consuming each other. Kelly re-mythologises the feminine into the hybrid creatures that have lurked within the human imagination over millennia and through doing so questions the assumptions and fears that have swirled around gender roles and rules in western culture. She does so through the hyper-contemporary visual language of digital media while also referring to early 20th century photo-montage pioneers such as Hannah Hoch and the Dada movement. In moving from the natural to the unnatural and the supernatural, Kelly makes the point that nothing may be what it seems and that how we view each other is always mediated through cultural and social conditioning.