Anna Perach explores the dynamics between personal and cultural myths. With diverse references including domesticity, fairy tales and psychoanalytic theory she transforms female archetypes into sculptural hybrids, exploring ideas of identity, gender, and craft. 

To accompany Holes, her 2024 exhibition at Gasworks, Anna has produced a series of 12 unique wall-based sculptures. In vibrant shades, and her distinctive hand-tufted style, they depict gloves gesturing, mid-argument, or mid-seduction. For Anna, a glove represents tactility and sensuality, they mask the body, allowing it to revel, transform and become something else. A similar work hangs in the exhibition, and is used as part of a new performance, titled Ecstasies, to activate a prone body into one of writhing ecstasy. 

Visually referencing the Hamsa, a palm-shaped amulet used a sign of protection, power and strength, the editions touches on Anna’s interest in spirituality and non-Western tradition. Each glove is adorned with symbology representing all-seeing eyes or feminine genitalia, hinting at our reliance of the body to protect us while also needing protection. 

The title, Touch, references one of our most important senses, and how we understand and comprehend the world. In Anna’s textile-worlds, where bodies dwell inside and outside of her sculptures, they might rub up against these gloves for luck, out of tradition or ceremony.