Install shots of my interactive sculpture “Pain and Glory” (2022) up now at @boldtendencies through September
 Pain and Glory is an interactive sculpture inspired by the often-guarded, sensual worlds of the underground. The work explores the slippery relationship between domination, spectatorship and performance, encouraging viewers to revel in the thrill and vulnerability of watching and being watched. Centred around a working mechanical bull enclosed by an ornate bullpen of adorned steel fencing, the sculpture simultaneously obscures and refracts the desiring gaze. In doing so, it evokes veiled spaces such as bars, darkrooms, bathhouses or strip clubs, made precarious by gentrification and policing. Evoking an exaggerated form of the impulse to love through domination, the machine’s undulating motion indexes yet also exceeds the erotic. In doing so, it draws comparisons between the repetitive labour of taming across the animal/human divide and subterranean rituals of intimacy and love. 
 Music composed by TWEAKS and SONIKKU @fka_tweaks @sonikku.wav Photos 1-9 by Deniz Guzel, last one by @heather_glazzard