Pharmakon — a remedy that is also a poison — will inform Briony’s studio approach during her residency. Transitional objects such as a teddy bear, blanket or clay rattle are said to be the first pharmakon. These objects mediate experiences of a child’s interiority with the external world, yet belong wholly to neither. During her residency, Briony will imagine toys as sculptural pharmakon, blurring the line between objects of ritual and of play, questioning sites of compliance, remediation and healing.
*The title ears licked clean by a snake, is part of a line from ‘Ask Asklepius’ by Eleni Sikelianos and Courtney Stephens, Poetry, September 2025.
Supported by the Macgeorge Bequest, the John and Mary Kerley Studio Research Travelling Scholarship and Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne Research Training Program.