You must have had the sensation that your brains were going to come out of your nose. The time you tried poppers because you were drunk and there were no better drugs going around. The next morning when you sneezed during the world’s worst hangover. While using a self-service checkout at Tesco. Whatever, Nick Sheehy can relate, or at least his fantastically macabre Metamorphosis drawings suggest he can, although truthfully the meaning behind them is probably more philosophical and meditative rather than autobiographical.
Sheehy’s weird cast of grotesque animalistic skeletons and fused skull creatures are anything but dead. It may not be brains coming out of their noses, but it is certainly something vital. Perhaps they are red ribbons of energy, powering their hosts. Perhaps they are the vessels, the veins and arteries, freed from the binding of muscle and skin to snake around the picked-clean bone like creeping vines and burrowing insects riddling a reanimated corpse. The exhibition consists of 15 main works – graphite and watercolour on paper – as well as smaller daily drawings accumulated towards the opening of Metamorphosis; the show is being held at Atomica Gallery, London, from 12 June to 10 July.
