Toad Lickers Collective: Late at Tate Britain
On 5 September 2025, we were invited to bring Toad Lickers to Tate Britain!
In response to Ithell Colquhoun Between Worlds, we created an immersive soft-sculpture installation for a ‘still life drawing’ session.
The installation is made up of bodies and parts of bodies that we think of as ‘muses’. The muses were created in the image of Victorian Spirit photography.
In the early days of the camera, spiritual mediums would have their sensitivity to spirits tested through photographs. While often they would be ‘exposed’ as frauds, these mediums - usually women - were pushing the boundaries of photography, creating ways of seeing what isn’t perceptible by the human eye and using the body as an arena for theatre or performance art.
Using elements from the beauty and fashion industry, we also hope these muses provide a space to think about bodies possessed - whether by spirits, by western standards of femininity and by control through power structures.
watch: vessels
An early version of the work, during testing at The Farm Art Space (@thefarm.artspace)
vessels is an image slideshow which was projected alongside the muses.
Ranging from Victorian spirit photographs to internet memes, it includes ghost photos from every era and ghost representations from CGI in low budget Nigerian film to Lady Gaga’s last minute sheet costume.
As a collection, the images help paint a picture of how the imagery of early spirit photography persists in contemporary society.