Somewhere Between A Doll And A Dog
Something caught my eye.
This happens often. The urge to explore and find things of interest takes over.
I walked down the side street and found the graffiti.
Words.
Intriguing me. Calling me, wanting to be remembered.
And then the images.
Outside a small building, part of the run down, semi-derelict (it appeared), industrial heart of this seaside town.
The sort of place that attracts me, pulls me in, with my camera poised, my interest piqued.
Images.
Some on fabric.
Displayed, outside the building, moving briskly at times on a cold, sometimes windy, grey, spring afternoon.
And then the surprise, the content, gradually becoming clearer the closer I got.
A gallery and exhibition.
With a challenge.
Will you see this and dare to enter?
I entered and it was empty.
A small building but large enough.
Walls with images, photographs, and yes, a space full of visual challenges for anyone walking through the door.
The artist was there. Young. Intriguing.
I walked around, engaged with the art, with the words and my emotions.
I chatted with the artist, the creator, the photographer.
They were open and in many ways brutally honest. Just like their work, I thought at the time.
Images from a three year visual diary, presented on stark walls and somewhat out of context, yet each with enough power to connect in their own right.
Deliberately provocative and presented as fragments, with family portraits and ephemera alongside fleeting sexual encounters and tender images of friends and lovers from trans and queer life.
Was I, were we, the intended audience for this work?
Perhaps we should have been.
Because a life lived differently in many ways is deserving of more attention than one we already know and believe we understand.
The emotions from some images lingered long past the purchase of the photobook and the conclusion of the conversation and experience.
This exhibition, in the artists own words...
extending beyond the architecture of the white cube....unfolds into the surrounding square and alleyways.
And also, words from a diary, presented as art and written, probably, by the artist to their younger self;
I’m sorry that no-one was there to protect you, or even really know what happened. I’m sorry that you will feel very alone. I’m sorry that this feeling with stay with you for pretty much your whole life and you’ll try to fill the void with dangerous and unnecessary things.
We only learn when we truly open our minds and put our own beliefs and experiences aside. And somewhere within this presentation of the mundane and the generic, the abstract and the explicit, I felt strangely connected and emotionally agitated, enough to feel that this was a lesson for me
Somewhere Between A Doll And A Dog by Ezekial was at CRATE in Margate between 21st March - 5th April 2026.
