Jim Coverley

Jim Coverley makes extraordinary works out of pillowcases and nails, which, like the work of a careful surgeon, are transformed with stitches, cuts and folds into sculptures which have both an emotional and symbolic resonance. The body is central to Coverley's art as he abstracts manages to extract the essence of pain or emotional states of being, and recreate them in troubling, three-dimensional forms. His work initially looks extremely delicate and decorative but on closer inspection it becomes increasingly disturbing, deliberately putting the viewer in an uncomfortable position. In previous works he has rendered a child's pillowcase the site of trauma and nightmares by modifying it with strange, disconcerting forms. Coverley hangs the sculptures directly onto the walls using nails, pinning the works as if the artist were performing some kind of 'rudimentary surgery'. These works play on the dualities between pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion.