Maisie Cousins is known for her hyper-saturated prints that toe the line between the sensual and the grotesque, subverting ideals of perfection and beauty. Her work often explores intimacy and sexuality, mixing close-ups of body parts with elements of flora and fauna that languish between rotting foodstuffs and jellified substances. “I like the excuse photography gives me to mess around with things that should probably just go to the bin,” Cousins told SLEEK. “Maybe half of it is the challenge of making something beautiful from something rancid.”
The juxtaposition of corporeal elements and objects that would ordinarily be considered as waste is a theme that is noticeable throughout the artist’s work and one that binds her first photographic monologue, Rubbish, Dipping Sauce, Grass Peonie Bum. “I wanted to create a book from the past five years, my favourites from different projects and things in-between — like a ‘best of’,“ said Cousins, who has previously contributed to Polyester zine and Petra Collins’s Babe. “I think in a time where image production is so fast, waiting to make a book feels really important.”
The book presents a collection of 44 page-filling images laying bare a fetishist depiction of mundane objects that become outlandish and surreal in their glossy, candid compositions. While the images from the three titular projects focus on the visual properties of different groups of objects from ants crawling over dissected fruits to greasy fingers melting into squishy buttocks, the forms are distorted and drenched in a sweaty, colourful haze that defies the reader not to want to reach out and touch.
“The pairing is potentially endless between projects there are so many links and similarities so I did it by what I felt instinctively worked well,” said the London-based artist, whose recent collaborations include perfumer Azzi Glasser and fellow photographer Francesca Allen. “I didn’t want any white space between the images, so full bleed and a constant flow felt the most fun.”
Rubbish, Dipping Sauce, Grass Peonie Bum is published by Trolley Books and will be released on 17 May 2019