Charlie Tuesday Gates

You can sense and smell death before you see it.... A smell like no other. It is far sweeter than you imagine and lingers for days after the body has been removed. This smell has come to be part of the experience of my work....Some people have been sick after entering the exhibition space where I have been but I think that's just the really sensitive people. You get used to it Dicing With Death was ...well I was nervous. Every time someone asked me how I was feeling I felt worse because they made me actually acknowledge how I was feeling and I was trying my hardest to shut it away. The more you think about things the more obsessed and worried you can become so I try and avoid that by not thinking at all. Gut instinct stuff. So to start off the 'performance' (which was more like a science lesson from a supply teacher who had only read notes before the lesson,) I got out the famous rat in bloody vodka water. It smelt worse than ever. It even smelt through the jar it's in

D.I.Y Taxidermy II: Dicing with Death Private view Nov 15th 7-10pm 7pm 7-9 Crucifix Lane Under the arches of London Bridge ARAB Photography Gates has a fascination with old, discarded objects and of collecting... Even collecting the dead. Digging things out the ground, scraping road kill off the streets of London, practising D.I.Y taxidermy. Gates opens creatures up to reveal their internal worlds, experimenting with preservation, manipulating the decay process using techniques like salt, gloss and shake’n’vac. With what is left she creates macabre sculptures, involving other found and meticulously arranged objects, placed into bizarre surreal assemblages. Creating Freakish characters, a metamorphosis of their discarded lives. Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/charlietuesdaygates#%21/event.php?eid=158806830819178 Facebook: http://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/Charlie-Tuesday-Gates-Artist-person/136474813038151 Review of previous exhibition: http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spoone

  Acid Fox in a Box            The Living room     My sisters ex frozen Goldfish   Mothers day gift. Mother never lets me take home anything dead. She pointed out this seagull floating in the water with an unfortunate hook in it's mouth, and as a special treat, she let me take it home- Bless The photographer Nathan Whitham came to take pictures of my new Museum House Of Death. Love from Charlie Gates x

Photos by James Stroud This Photogrpher asked to do a shoot in my old studio. http://www.james-stroud.co.uk/

This was my first and last performance entitled 'D.I.Y Taxidermy' When I first conceived the idea of live taxidermy...I felt a little bit weird. Was this right? Was this a good idea? The more I thought about it the easier it was to stomach. I had only ever half skinned a fox before so the thought of skinning animals in front of a live audience was daunting-espically as I had no real clue what I was doing. I decided not to think about it and let the magic happen spontaneously.  The first thing I did was get out the 'pickled rat' (for more information of the rat see a previous blog). This rat had been sitting in it's own bloody vodka juice for well over 6 months. Pulled out by it's tail, I then proceeded to ring it out so all the rat juice dripped away- I then poured shots of blood rat dirt water- no one drunk it.   The rest was more like a D.I.Y cooking show, done in a relaxed style where I would rabbit on about this and that, explaining where and how I came ac

rabt@rabphoto.com D.I.Y.TAXIDERMY Private View: Thursday June 3rd  The Nunnery 7-9pm 183 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ Gallery opening times:10-6 Fri Sat Sun Bringing together science, intuition and disturbing curiosity, Charlie Tuesday Gates will be preparing and treating animals you have grown to know and love in a D.I.Y style. But there is far more to see than experimental taxidermy! B.Y.O road kill and you coukld end up taking a piece of the magic home with you. Love from Charlie Gates x http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120174398021053&ref=mf http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Charlie+Gates/104092.html Love from Charlie Gates x This is where the Terradactyl's live. Much amazing thanks to Robin Turner for taking these photos. rabt@rabtphoto.com

TIT'S ON A HORSE (There is some mild explanation for this somewhere in the blog) Shots from the candlelit exhibition.... you can't actually really see anything, but it looked bloody beautiful. You would be walking around in the dark, and all of a sudden things would appear in front of you strangely. This is not going to be here for long as it's sat on an Olympic goldmine looked after by the Russian Mafia, so come and have a look before it is gone forever!