Sophia Olivieri
Jillian Nalty
Alannah Dair
Zoë MacPhail Prineas
Curated by Lucy Brosnan
23.04.2026 - 16.05.2026
Our connection to our bodies is both deeply intimate and individual, yet something we all inhabit. Our bodies are assigned to us, developed in the womb, growing until they begin slowly decaying. Tissue stretches, skin creases over time, fluids oozing out. Reacting to its own internal state as well as its external environment, the body is in a constant state of flux. My fingernails grow back. Often fighting back. One grows, digging into the edges, creating pressure, swelling, and pain. We negotiate with our bodies. The same vessel that provides pleasure facilitates discomfort and pain. I pick and pry, trying to reverse the consequences of my invasive intervention.
Inside the Doll Factory, a production line of tensions unfolds, between masculine and feminine, the interior and exterior, the sensual and the industrial, the organic and the manufactured. This group of artists work through visual and material language to draw us into a heightened awareness of bodily sensation and the shifting environments we inhabit. What emerges is not a stable image of the body or a familiar representation of the human figure. We are met with something stranger, forms that feel familiar and estranged simultaneously, evoking a quiet discomfort that resists easy resolution. Each artist approaches this terrain differently, yet their practices converge through materiality and an engagement with the human form. They suggest bodily form and qualities through surface, texture, and spatial encounter. The body is a mutable site, shaped by social, technological, and psychological forces, while remaining a vessel through which sensation becomes a way of knowing or finding out.
– Lucy Brosnan