From Tom Groves, an artist based in London, we present the project titled ‘Like a Prayer.’
This collection of analog photographs is a part of a larger body of work that takes its inspiration from British fetish archives, in particular the well-renowned Atomage Magazine.
Groves approaches the topic methodically, drawing from his academic background and extensive theoretical knowledge of art. The series is well thought-through and carefully curated, exploring “the relationship between desire, materiality, and image-making.” Through artificial lighting and synthetic materials, the artist portrays the most primal and organic parts of the human psyche. He allows the uncontrollable to exist and resound in a controlled environment.
And yet, it is not an attempt at suppression, neither inventory nor creating an encyclopedia of kinks. “I return to this material not to decode or historicise it but because it offers a complex visual and affective language that, despite the dominance of an overtly objectifying gaze, remains generative and grounded in care, sensuality, surface, constraint, and intensity,” Groves explains. There is a genuine artistic curiosity and impulsive playfulness that took over this project. Similar to Madonna’s pop hit, which the series shares its title with, it carries a meaning that can be obvious only to those viewers who are in touch with their erotic part of the subconscious.
The untitled works from this ongoing series represent a tribute to raw, visceral photo editorials that focus on materialism and beauty standards.
Groves evokes the strong connection between creativity and eroticism, showing how they can overlap and become synonymous. Through uncomfortable close-ups, awkward poses, and static props or background elements, he accentuates a sense of craving that is juxtaposed with an adamant thirst to conceive and to give art room to exist. As the artist notes: “Underlying the work is a sense that the creative and erotic drives are closely aligned, if not indistinguishable, both concerned with projection, transformation, and a movement beyond the atomized self.”
Groves’ world is one of objectification, of synthetic nature and artificial feelings. The pastel light, the faded smiles on the subjects’ faces, and their mannequin-like body parts are all constrained by the viewer’s judgmental eye. The photographer manages to turn viewers into more than just witnesses, making them participants in a scene that seemingly begs for coldness and overcriticism. The artist allows for this through a clever and compelling use of placeholder meanings incorporated into each piece, giving us the ability to project ourselves into the scene and assign it any meaning we believe we choose.
“The images often involve my own body and function as staged encounters in which appearances are mediated through clothing, gesture, and apparatus. Latex, leather, cord, and light shape the conditions of the image, concentrating attention and producing a charged, ambiguous atmosphere that hovers between the erotic and something less easily defined,” Groves concludes.
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
