The Corpomastix

Picalilli, SE26, 01/04/25 - 10/05/25

“The Bishops' Ban of 1599, banned satire from prose and verse, forcing an embodiment

through the stage. This gave rise to the Elizabethan ‘War of the Theatres’ until ultimately

the suffix ‘-mastix’, used in these plays, became generic for satire by the 1660s. The

Corpomastix is a fabrication, a staging device, yoked units; Dog Latin.”

Ballett presents a new body of work consisting of sculpture, objects and drawings centred around a fictional play ‘The Corpomastix’. Working through a sculptural methodology and expressions of capital, the grotesque, where material and motif cycles in perpetual metamorphosis between staging and index.

The Corpomastix works through questions of theatre and theatricality, its title acting as subject and figurative device; the theatrical technique to at one correlate to the body and to transcend the body in allegorical form. Concerned with sculptural problems and object status, Ballett’s work forms an idiosyncratic taxonomy to ask how material becomes shaped, and where to draw its boundaries in a post-conceptual field. Using decoys and substitutes to test the freedom and restraints of formal structure, to expose the effects of sovereign forces on the body and the violence between state and subject.