Anna Hoyle

My irksome salmon cutlet squelches around, breathing slowly, stretching deeply into its #gogreen #mindsetmagic afront of 150 shrieky coloured gouache paintings. Kooky word-audio loops screech from animations in a darkened space nearby. This practice examines and exploits the significance of the textual and visual language found in cultures of wellness, self-help, and greenwash. I trawl contexts of social media and consumerism, where aspirational parroting of wellness and self are so unrelenting, that I am compelled to play with the dysfunctional, or unrealistic existential perspectives found in the language they use. Compulsively creating amidst an aesthetic of excess fuels both critique and celebration of consumerist surfeit.
Through linguistic and aesthetic play, I show how online and commodified language often hides stealthy truths. Reflecting upon Lauren Berlant’s idea of ‘cruel optimism’ within self-help / entreprawneurial speak and a related capitalist climate of ‘peak narcissism’ I humorously expose optimism’s underbelly of anxiety and melancholy.