Primary Instincts

Coady’s work straddles the divide between humour and critique in this exciting exhibition, exploring modernity and nostalgia and playing with the juxtaposition of a serious message delivered with humour against an absurdist backdrop. Coady’s latest exhibition, Primary Instincts, is a callback to the vibrancy of 1960’s pop culture with her use of bright colours and repeating patterns, while contrasting against the dark modern epidemic of pill popping culture.
When headlines are full of the dangers of vaping and self-medicating, Coady’s solo exhibition becomes a call to arms, exposing the complex structure of addiction in an immersive, bold show.
Consisting of ‘larger than life’ wall sculptures and oil paintings, Coady transforms the simple mass-produced form of the tablet into statements about the world that pushes and pops them, presenting our culture where the answer to everything from minor aches to existential angst is “take two and call me in the morning”;. Elsewhere, she reduces the pills to studies in shape, colour and composition – prescribed to soothe and numb, the capsules become the simplicity they offer us.

Building on her colloquial title of Pop Artist for the 21st century, Primary Instincts expands on Coadys’ earlier works using pills as an encapsulation of our vices. Coadys’ signature use of tablets serves as a visual stimulant, using shapes and colours to play with the iconography of contemporary consumerist culture and its promises of gratification, control and quick and easy fixes. In this exhibition, plastic pills and paintings explode in bright reds, yellows, blues and greens, evocative of childhood learning and games, creating a sense of familiarity and awakening our understanding of the complex layers of our conditioning from childhood. PrimaryInstincts peels back the layers of addiction, tying our dependency on medication to the manipulation of our most basic needs, security, comfort and control.