UNTITLED PROBIOTICS (2020)

Scoby, beeswax, cardboard, paint, photographic prints, box tape.

Dimensions vary.

This work is an exploration into usefulness, misuse and the manipulation of forms and spaces. The artist has taken scobies, a byproduct created in the process of making kombucha, and manipulated them through detailed processes to force them to grow and contort into the shape of a condom. The artist explores how the temporal space an object resides in can manipulate the meaning and reaction that object evokes. A wrapped condom is the epitome of cleanliness, yet unravelled and strewn about, they become sites of danger and disgust. Rankin-Cheek takes the inherently non-sexual object of the scoby and manipulates it into a sexual form. The prints on the walls are references to external spaces, as when either a condom or scoby is placed in a gallery space, it is once again manipulated and lifted up, to be an art object of importance. The photographs act as links between the gallery and the outside world, playing with these ideas of spacial manipulation.