In Maisie Cousins' photograph "snails," vibrant purples and blues dominate the composition, featuring snails traversing textured cabbage leaves against a backdrop that suggests a domestic setting with cracked eggshells. The piece melds natural and everyday elements, combining vivid colors and organic shapes to create a striking visual contrast. Cousins' distinctive style blends beauty with the grotesque, challenging traditional aesthetics and inviting viewers to explore the edges of societal norms. This work reflects Cousins' ongoing exploration of the interface between the alluring and the repellent in modern life. ...
Maisie Cousins’ photographic practice marries beauty and disgust, interweaving food, trash, flesh, insects and decay into a kaleidoscopic world of colour. Seeing things through Cousins’ eyes takes us into a bright and saturated Wonderland of toys, icecream, lips, stomachs and tongues, smears of lipstick, jelly and juice. It’s our bins, sinks and childhood bedrooms visualised by Barbie, coloured in by toddlers. It’s glorious, nauseating, glossy and stunning. Cousins’ compositions take us into a fever dream journey through a visceral, grotesque circus show. Her practice encourages us to let go of our societally imposed niceties, to eat in the nude, to spill, to smear, to befriend the trails of ants on the plate of dessert from the other night that we left on our floor. Be dirty, be trashy, be happy and be beautiful, all at the same time. ...
