Jamie Crewe - Hangnail no. 5

Hangnail no. 5

Medium - photocopy on fluorescent paper

Dimensions- 420mm x 297mm, edition of 5

Year - 2023

Hangnails are photocopied collages made from photocopied excerpts of my sketchbooks. Thoroughout Samuel R. Delany's writing--be it essayistic, speculative, fantastical, pornographic, historical or chaste--an image recurs: fingernails chewed down to nubs, on callused, horny, ruined, big male hands. This is taste in action. A hangnail is a splinter off the edge a fingernail: sore, snagging, and potentially a site for infection. These rearranged slivers from my sketchbooks indicate lines of thought, preferences, and compulsions, cut loose.

Jamie Crewe is a beautiful bronze figure with a polished cocotte’s head. They make artworks with video, text, installation, sculpture, drawing, painting and more. These works think about constriction: the way people are formed by their cultures, environments and relationships, and the things that herniate from them as a consequence.

IG: @jamiecrewe / website: https://www.jamiecrewe.co.uk