Screening and artist talk: 15 February, 7 pm
Kupfer and Leo Costelloe are delighted to present Beautiful Bride in the City (2023), Costelloe's debut moving image work, starring Chris Owen as "The Bride”. This is the second iteration of the installation, screened as part of LGBTQIA+ History Month, kindly supported by Hackney Council.
Beautiful Bride in the City follows the titular subject's slow progress through London's urban sprawl, hem soaked brown from soggy pavements, veil dragging along a Jubilee Line train. The incongruous union of subject and surroundings unfolds like a love letter to the city as much as an expression of displacement within it. Costelloe’s accompanying narration constellates autobiography and pop cultural references to muse on themes of loss and longing, while the archetypal bride figure adds to the visual lexicon of his sculptural practice, which frequently employs motifs of nostalgia, femininity and decoration to confound the line between the beautiful, the banal, and the potentially sinister.
Leo Costelloe (b.1993) is an Australian-born artist living and working in London. His multi-disciplinary practice, including work in glass, metal and silversmithing as well as video and installation, explores the transient and sentimental nature of objects and images, drawing inspiration from popular culture, spiritual practice and personal experience. Costello graduated from Central Saint Martins with a BA (Hons) in Jewellery Design.
Costelloe has been the subject of two solo shows, at Kupfer, London (2023) and Ridley Road Project Space, London (2022) and has been included in group shows at Indigo + Madder, London (2023); Guts Gallery, London (2023) curated by Helen Neven; Kupfer, London (2023); Photobook Gallery, London (2023); and Ridley Road Project Space, London (2022). He was awarded the Swarovski Scholar Award (2020) after having been a finalist for the same in 2019.
Text by Helen Neven
