MAISIE COUSINS

Launch date: Monday 6th December 2021

Particular Ideas are delighted to announce the launch of a series of limited-edition tea towels by Maisie Cousins. Blurring the line between the gaudy and beautiful, Prawn, Tart and Meringue (2021) are surreal and audaciously-colourful portraits that marry images of food with the human body.  

The collages that Cousins has created especially for the project combine fragments of photographic images with blocks of colour and hand drawn elements, humorously de-contextualising the imagery and affording it new meaning: a cooked prawn becomes an eye, a pair of pink meringues are turned into breasts and a cherry Bakewell forms of a mouth, puckering up and waiting for lipstick tip to be applied. Neither the food nor its use as body parts are always immediately appealing, nor do they always sit comfortably with one another. As with her photographic work, Cousins looks to subvert ideals of perfection and asks questions about what we find beautiful.  

Maisie Cousins (UK, 1992) is a London-based artist and photographer whose stimulating images explore the relationship between the beautiful and the grotesque with a visceral rawness. Cousins uses intimately cropped images of detailed subject matter to push the boundaries of seduction and repulsion. The glossy and hyper-saturated images feature motifs such as food, flowers, waste and the impoliteness of the body, the latter as celebration of femininity.

Particular Ideas is a contemporary arts enterprise that collaborates with artists on exhibitions, special projects and limited-edition artworks. 

Photographer: Dead Zebra

Print studio: K2 Screen

For press requests and further information please contact Charlie Nia Dunnery McCracken: Charlie@particularideas.com