Working with collage, drawing, installation and video, Victoria Colmegna explores the fluid dynamics between psychology, medicine, art and fashion. Mobilising kitsch, glossy aesthetics, Colmegna frequently layers pop cultural objects together with archival fragments or art historical images, weaving together bizarre cultural tableaux. In her collage series The Cure (2023), Colmegna gathers various books such as Freudian texts, A Tibetan Book of Healing, a cosmological study and information booklets around Bipolar, photographing these texts in gaudy, camp contexts. Lingerie, care bears, studded leather belts and tiaras enshroud these books. Each print acts as a hallucinatory self-portrait, referencing Colmegna’s coming of age, or perhaps rendering wider culture’s conflicting social messages. Other bodies of work have seen Colmegna delve deeper into this exploration of self, drawing her own self-portraits alongside found yearbook images, or fictionalising moments from history such as the Manson murders. This fleeting, kaleidoscopic investigation of popular culture characterises Colmegna’s practice as she continues to untangle the ever-changing contours of culture and its relationship to selfhood.

Fitzpatrick Gallery