Distinctly female forms in Dispenza’s new painting and sculptural works jostle with an energetic rawness both familiar and foreign. Breasts, limbs, orifices and heads – both human and animal – amalgamate into creatures and scenes that defy provenance. They are the unexpected consequence of our contemporary moment; a moment defined by desire and an uncharted, frenzied awakening. Blending sand with coloured mineral powders and other materials such as concrete, volcanic ash and mud, Dispenza gives the surfaces of her paintings a kind of agency, the tactile, porous nature of the material performing its own presence. This sculptural quality of her canvasses, together with the ethereal nature of her bronze part-human part-other figures, thrust the works into a complex dialogue between narrative, form and space. Walking through and among Dispenza’s works, our own body and the space it occupies begin to transform and shift as familiarity collides with the unexpected.
