Two Queens is proud to announce a new group exhibition in our Project Space Gallery organised and co-curated by by Two Queens members Lucy Andrews, Jane Domingos, and Julie Kilminster. The exhibition explores the nature of our worries, anxieties and over-thinking through painting, ceramics and sculpture.

Everybody experiences negative intrusive thoughts. Ideally these remain ethereal and float through our consciousness, weightless, rarely causing more than temporary consideration before dispersing. However, many people give negative thoughts such gravitas and substance that they become visualised objects with a life of their own. A thought becomes catastrophized, blown out of proportion, overwhelming, something we can’t deal with effectively. We worry about the worry and our head is quickly filled with ever increasing, larger than life objects, swirling around or ricocheting back and forth in an agitated state.

Jane Domingos has created a painting that depicts worries as a variety of brightly coloured, objects moving around a large but ultimately confined space which is our brain. Uncharacteristic of her usual practice, she will be using a bright palette. Lurid objects emerging from the dark recesses of our mind, memory and subconscious.

Repetitive behaviours and ruminations feed like leeches on worries and anxieties, growing larger and fatter with time. Lucy Andrews’ work addresses this compulsion to repeat unpleasant thought processes over and over, and the creatures created are the embodiment of these ruminations. The repetitive action of throwing on a potter’s wheel mirrors this process.

Julie Kilminster explores the sense of duality between the ethereal and oppressive nature of worry; in this piece, the air is thick with worrying – most of the balls of worrying are made from 20 minute sessions of “worry time”, with the exception of the wire “worry loop” balls. These are real-life worries, which left un-checked can become all-consuming and leave the worrier feeling heavy of head and heart.