16 One Act Plays | Bobbye Fermie

About

“All the world’s a stage...” If our whole lives are performances, what happens when we get stage fright? In her solo show 16 One Act Plays, Bobbye Fermie presents an enigmatic series of quietly theatrical paintings, in which anxieties rub up against feelings of safety and notions of public performance are held in tension with introspection.

Fermie’s work is inspired in part by Victorian toy theatres, in which cut-outs of architectural features, furniture, and people are slotted into place one after another to create scenographic depth, framed by theatrical curtains. Working across watercolour, drawing, and acrylic on canvas, Fermie deploys a similar process of cutting out and collaging, overlaying spatial backgrounds with silhouetted figures as well as patterns drawn from botanical and domestic imagery.

This body of work is deeply concerned with the relationship between public and private. Figures are overlaid with perforated shapes that both reveal and conceal; a lace curtain, for example, or a grid of flowers inspired by an antique air vent. Fermie repeatedly asks the viewer to consider the relationship between the figure and their surroundings; are they choosing to hide, or are they waiting to step out to perform? Are they comfortable among the objects beside them, or do they feel trapped?

Fermie’s female characters are often depicted within safe, homely settings, but they are simultaneously being thrust into a theatrical spotlight. They are either staged in isolation or caught in intimate shared moments, enclosed in a domestic context that has been constructed for the viewing pleasure of an unseen audience – a voyeuristic perspective implicitly shared by the viewer.

There is a timelessness to Fermie’s oeuvre. The use of silhouettes and familiar patterns forges a visual world of archetypes, in which objects and people carry a weight of unidentifiable emotions. Botanical motifs symbolise a meeting point between inside and outside, where the domesticated meets the wild in a way that is elegantly beautiful while always subtly threatening to spin out of control.

Each “one act play” tells a complex yet mysterious narrative, in which motivations and backstories are tantalisingly obscure. Frayed canvas threads suggest an unravelling of relations, replete with social anxieties and internalised conversations. In some pieces, figures appear to fade or to stand unwittingly beside their own ghostly echoes, hinting at a sense of uncertainty around personal boundaries. Fermie’s paintings tread the fine line between personhood and persona; between our true selves and the versions of ourselves we present to the world.