Artist Bio
(They/She)
Martha Summers (b.1991) is an artist, architect and leatherworker living and working in London. Their practice explores the intersections of domesticity and identity, particularly from their positionality as an agender butch dyke. Their practice is 3 dimensional, with works that range from small sculptures, through to large scale site specific installations and spatial transformations. They deal in joy, humour and unapologetic camp as a way into deeper narratives about the body and sexualities.
TOOLbelt
TOOLbelt (2022) is an absurdist sculpture which combines a strap-on harness with a toolbelt. The work is autobiographical, telling a story about escape, robustness, resourcefulness and do-it-yourself self-fashioning. It examines how for some what may be a sex "toy" is for others, a sex "tool", an extension of the body with a specific service/job in mind, over which she/they/he seek mastery. It thinks about the butch lesbian connection to the trades and manual occupations and how this kind of "handiness" speaks to the queer experience of DIYing our self-hoods and bodies in a society which doesn't cater to us.
@marfsummers on Instagram
