We are meat, we are potential carcasses
- Francis Bacon

By mutating their surrounding waste objects, Manchester-based artist Anna Stevens creates sculptural explorations into the life and materiality of personal detritus. Reflecting on themes of gluttony, alcoholism, compulsivity and mortality, the artist reflects upon the duality of consumption, both personal and societal in a contemporary capitalist era and its subsequent destruction of body and milieu. By undoing the forms of bottles and boxes, Stevens cultivates poisoned bodies and projects disturbed psyches in a sticky, decaying, and unreal aesthetic. Craft, play and theatricality reconstruct these abject items, lending to their surreal and child-like appearance. The studio becomes a place of (self)reflection and exploration of the artist’s experiences of the brutal neo-liberal Anthropocene that sticks to and congeals on one’s body and mind, leaving a trail of devastation and (self)exploitation in its wake.