Stepping on snails in socks brings together five artists whose work mingles with the often-unconsidered abject states of being of our bodies.

Curated by Julie Vinci and featuring paintings and digital prints by Ingmar Apinis, Aylsa McHugh, Oliva Mroz, Steven Rendall (courtesy of Niagara Galleries) and Julie Vinci. This group exhibition focuses on the disparate forms of representation of human feet and legs, from an abject and almost ritualistic obsessive viewpoint.  

Brought about from a memory as recounted by Julie Vinci:  

“Inspired by an incident from my childhood, when late one night, feeling hungry, I walked through the dark kitchen and into the pantry in search of a snack. With my first footstep into the pantry, I was overcome by a sense of complete horror and total disgust at the sensation I had just experienced when I stepped on a snail wearing only socks.

I lifted my foot to see the wet stain of brown and green slime and crushed shell that was now attached to my body, feeling it through the sock and on my skin in an instant my hunger left me.

This instant and absolute flip of state is what I am feeling in each work in this exhibition. Bodies that are at caught in a place synchronously inhabiting beauty, ugliness, desire and repulsion. Being delicate and gross all at once.

Incongruous to societies current obsession with fitting either ‘this one or the other,’ our real interest and beauty lies in the dichotomy of simply being.”

Curated by Julie Vinci