Borrowing its title from the 1992 dark comedy, Death Becomes Her uses comedic catharsis to contemplate and challenge issues surrounding the idealisations of constructed femininity. Ceramics, in particular porcelain, take centre stage in the exhibition. Porcelain’s long-standing associations with desire, consumption and taste are harnessed to illustrate the perils of beauty, morality and mortality when demanded of the female form. Humour and horror intertwine in a dance to illustrate the cruel complexities of beauty standards in our continuous pursuit of perfection.
Repurposing symbols and allegories of vanitas motifs, this sculptural series offers a viscerally honest depiction of the feminine coded experience while examining the body as a mass of muscle, meat and memento mori. Pearlescent silver and gold lustres adorn skulls, extinguished candles and clock faces while pastel palettes and soft pink hues encase scattered emblems and artefacts of youth. They unite to grieve the death of girlhood and morph into a body of constant, uncontrollable transformation. Forever in need of being fixed, altered or punished.
Both figurative and narrative, the sculptures teeter between seductive and disturbing. They spill, protect, reveal, shackle, comfort, consume and isolate. From the ideal body to the deviant body, corporeality is not fixed. We age, sag, and change - and to be truly embedded in the human experience is to hold both the grotesque and the beautiful all at once
Camilla Hanney (b. 1992) is an Irish artist based in London. She holds an MFA from Goldsmiths University (2017-2019) and a degree in Visual Arts Practice from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (2010-2015). Since relocating to London, her work has - featured in both solo and group exhibitions across Ireland and the UK, showcasing her practice at notable venues such as the South London Gallery (in collaboration with Bloomberg New Contemporaries), Unit 1 Gallery, Muse Gallery, Dora House, Messums, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Gallery Rosenfeld, and Cromwell Place Gallery.
Camilla received the Sarabande Foundation Studio Bursary for 2019/20 and was the runner-up for the UK Young Artist of the Year award at its inaugural ceremony held at Saatchi Gallery in 2019. She was also one of the winners of the Gilbert Bayes Sculpture Award in 2020 and has received Irish Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Awards in both 2020 and 2024. Additionally, she was awarded the 2022 Newbury Trust Craft Excellence Award in collaboration with Cockpit Arts and selected for the 2022 Pallas Projects Artist-Initiated Projects, funded by the Irish Arts Council, leading to a solo exhibition at their gallery in Dublin.
Camilla was recently shortlisted for the Ingram Prize and was one of the ten laureates exhibiting at Ceramic Brussels 2025. Her work has garnered attention in publications such as Ceramic Review, Crafts Magazine, Elephant Magazine, Wallpaper*, Showstudio, Mission Mag, and Harper's Bazaar.