A self-named ‘vicious changeling’, Jamie Crewe explores themes of identity, community, heartbreak, LGBTQIA+ solidarity and support through an experimental combination of film, installation, sculpture and text. Often taking renowned pieces of literature, film and theatre as their starting point, Crewe creates eloquent works that defy categorization and exist in the cracks of apparently unmovable binaries. In their Solidarity and Love exhibition (Humber Street Gallery, 2020), Crewe explored the legacy of Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness among the contemporary queer community. In their Female Executioner exhibition (Gasworks, 2017) they worked with Rachilde’s Monsieur Venus: A Materialist Novel (1884), misreading the novel in relation to the artist’s personal trans experience. Crewe’s moving image works, such as their ‘rural horror’ film, Ashley (2020), address the continuous transformation inherent to a trans life, fueled by a sense of identity and desire, belonging and trauma. In such a way, transformation, through cuts, splits, restagings and reinterpretations, lands at the core of Crewe’s practice. ...
